Word: nauru
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...financial center of gravity in the world has shifted toward the Pacific Rim, new tax and secrecy havens have multiplied on such remote islands as Nauru in the western Pacific and Palau and Truk in Micronesia. Citizens of Vanuatu, a volcanic archipelago of some 80 islands formerly known as the New Hebrides, have found that international finance beats coconut and taro farming. In Port Vila, the capital, it is not unusual for a $100 million transaction between major international banks to take place on any given...
...Nauru...
When I confessed that I was not aware of such a country, my friend described it as an island republic in the Pacific composed almost entirely of bird droppings, which its small population exports as phosphates at enormous profit. "In fact," my friend said, "Nauru is literally chipping itself away and will, in time, disappear completely. In the meantime, you can either root for its Olympic team or, failing that, compete in its name...
...there was any group that would know of Nauru's track team and stars (it had neither, it turned out) it was the one with which I traveled to Moscow, a tourist contingent sponsored by Track and Field News. "You are in a group," I was told, "of fans like no other-track fans-who will sit in the rain for four hours to watch someone throw a hammer. It doesn't matter to them where they are. They could be watching in the wastes of the Gobi Desert as long as someone grunts and there...