Word: national
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...boats full of 5,516 asylum seekers arrived that year - the conservative John Howard government established the grimly named "Pacific Solution," which diverted asylum seekers arriving to Australia by boat to remote detention centers scattered around the Pacific Ocean. Holding camps were set up on the small island nation of Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, where would-be refugees were kept indefinitely while their applications were processed. Many were confined in the premises while construction was still being completed, much to the dismay of human-rights groups, and some legitimate refugees were stuck in the camps...
...Still, Berlusconi's almost instant reference to a possible troop pullout was the centerpiece of a day of impassioned, often contradictory reactions from the highest levels of the Italian government. It followed the nation's worst day of military casualties since a November 2003 car-bomb attack in Nasiriyah, in southern Iraq, killed 19 Italian soldiers. That death toll was cited when Italy eventually pulled out of Iraq in 2006, but at the time of the Nasiriyah attack, Berlusconi held firm to Italy's military commitment and ironclad alliance with then U.S. President George W. Bush. (See Berlusconi's worst...
...Thursday?s bombing raises the question of whether American intervention in Somalia is undermining the Somali President's ability to woo the moderate Islamists whose support he'll need to restore peace in Somalia. The U.S. does not seem ready to abandon the country anytime soon. During her seven-nation tour of Africa in August, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Somali President Sheik Sharif Ahmed - a symbolically potent occasion, given that he had once opposed the U.S.-backed Ethiopian troops that invaded Somalia in 2006 to try to defeat the Islamists. The Americans will most likely continue...
After months of anticipation and blown deadlines, Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus on Wednesday finally unveiled his bill to overhaul the nation's health-care system. The Montana Democrat did his best to sell the controversial proposal, stressing that it was largely in line with the principles laid out last week by President Barack Obama: it has a 10-year price tag of less than $900 billion, doesn't add to the deficit and includes a mechanism to ensure that those with pre-existing conditions can't be denied coverage. But Baucus' relentlessly positive spin couldn't change...
...Orwellian machinery of control underlying the Party's rule. The specter of robotic ranks of soldiers marching past stone-faced leaders on the reviewing stand is an example of how Beijing often reveals an image of China that is completely at odds with the vision of a modern, peaceful nation the government is normally at pains to portray to the rest of the world. Such discrepancies probably matter little to those planning the anniversary parade. They know there is only one audience for this particular extravaganza: the Chinese people. And Beijingers don't seem concerned that their city has been...