Word: nationalities
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...Thailand, people literally wear their politics on their sleeves. The nation has been locked for years in a paralyzing political showdown between two camps. There are the red shirts, who support former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 military coup and later convicted in absentia of abuse of power. And there are the establishment yellow shirts, who back current Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva. On March 12, around 100,000 red shirts, whose numbers are drawn largely from Thailand's poor rural regions, began descending on Bangkok by bus, truck, boat and tractor for what they deemed...
...protests are the latest in a years-running to-and-fro between the groups. In 2008, the yellows occupied Government House, the nation's seat of power, for three months. Later they hijacked Bangkok's two airports for a week, a disaster for a tourism-dependent economy. Last year, after a yellow-supported government took office, the reds swarmed an international summit at a seaside resort, forcing the emergency airlift of foreign leaders. That was followed by a scarlet siege of Government House, a takeover that culminated in Thailand's worst political violence in nearly two decades...
...course, the color revolutions - orange in Ukraine or rose in Georgia - prove that Thailand is not the only country that mixes politics and pigments. But no other nation is quite as rigid about color schemes. In the U.S., Democrats may be associated with blue, but that didn't stop Barack Obama from wearing a red tie on Inauguration Day. (Outgoing President George W. Bush chose a blue tie for the occasion.) (Read "Amid Massive Protests, Thai PM Won't Step Down...
...gold-trimmed letters marking Haiti's Legislative Palace still shine brightly on the front wall of the seaside building in Port-au-Prince. But the massive earthquake that hit the nation on Jan. 12, killing more than 200,000 people, left a hole on one side of the structure, exposing a black wrought-iron staircase. The quake ripped open the building's opposite side, where detritus like metal, concrete, chairs, desks and paper scraps spewed forth like volcanic lava...
...country. But Haitian President René Préval and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week urged that legislative elections, which were supposed to have taken place in February and March, and the presidential balloting, which has yet to be scheduled, be held. Otherwise, they warn, the nation, which has a long, violent history of political turmoil and dictatorships, risks undermining its fledgling democracy...