Word: marianas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Iranian city of Bam, which, on Dec. 26, 2003 - exactly a year before the Indonesian tsunami - was leveled by an earthquake. Of the 100,000 inhabitants, 30,000 died. The rest were left to flee, or live in rubble. In the poignant Voices of Bam, Dutch filmmakers Mariana Van Der Horst and Maasja Ooms patrol the devastated town and tiptoe into the minds of those who remain; the survivors speak, in poetic voiceover, of the family, the wives and lovers who live only in their memories, haunt their days and dreams...
Benigno Fitial, Governor of the Northern Mariana Islands and a former Abramoff client who also attended the 2001 meeting, told TIME that he recalled the President as being "very gracious" at the session, during which Bush gave a short speech on tax policy. "He knew quite a few of the people in the room," Fitial said of the President. "He called them by their first name...
...Benigno Fitial, the governor of the Northern Mariana Islands, told TIME he attended the 2001 meeting as well. Then an Abramoff client, the governor recalled asking the President a question about tax policy as part of a discussion among the small group after Bush had given a short speech on the subject. Fitial was seeking low-tax and relaxed labor regulations for the Northern Marianas at the time. Fitial said he used a photograph of himself with President Bush taken at the meeting in his campaign for governor...
...Mariana Islands: Abramoff's first major client paid him $9 million in fees. He helped block legislation, opposed by the U.S. protectorate's textile industry, that would have imposed a minimum-wage law. The Marianas were the venue of many junkets for lawmakers...
...Washington Post reported that nearly all its funding came from corporations linked to Abramoff?including a million-dollar payment that may well have come indirectly from corrupt Russian oil interests, which have never expressed much interest in moral fitness; half a million dollars from textile companies in the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific that are known for their cheap labor; and a quarter of a million from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, Abramoff's largest client. (See accompanying graphic...