Word: news
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...first revolution to be fully televised. By way of 24-hour cable news, the world witnessed four days of the military-civilian rebellion, a preview of similar uprisings that would later shake out the autocracies of Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. In a sweep of U.S. helicopters, Marcos was whisked off to exile in Hawaii, and Aquino was proclaimed President of the Philippines. It was a most astonishing political story. Time named her Woman of the Year at the end of 1986, the first female to hold Time's annual distinction on her own since...
...small number of vulture lovers the world over, good news comes this summer from Sindh, Pakistan. In June, a new "vulture restaurant" opened to provide safe food for the endangered birds - no reservations needed, but it's always a fierce fight for the flesh. Similar vulture ventures have already been successful in South Africa, India and Nepal, where one region in which a restaurant started to provide vultures with clean carcasses saw a doubling of nesting pairs in just two years, according to Bird Conservation Nepal...
...Alas, uplifting news is rare in the vulture world: the big picture is that the birds, commonly portrayed as harbingers of death, are themselves facing doom, particularly in the eastern hemisphere. Three species in South and Southeast Asia were placed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's critically endangered list 10 years ago - to little effect. The oriental white-backed vulture population has declined a catastrophic 99.9% in the past 15 years; once estimated at 40 million, the global number now sits below 11,000. The long-billed and the slender-billed vulture populations have also fallen nearly...
...meal isn't vultures' only problem these days. Their natural habitat of wooded areas is continually being encroached upon as more trees are being cut down to make way for villages and cities, and the endangered vultures can be injured in aircraft collisions. And that's not only bad news for the birds. Countries where vultures are most threatened, such as Nepal, India and Pakistan, rely heavily on vultures for a kind of natural maid service: as they clear out dead animals, the risk of disease is also reduced. Dangerous wild-dog packs that feed on dead livestock have also...
...sentiment that is not good news for President Ma Ying-jeou, elected with 58% of the vote last year and already battling the island's recession, who now faces another major challenge to his relatively new administration. Taiwan is known for its susceptibility to big storms, and many at the national level have said that Taipei's well-funded emergency response teams should have been able to get to the stranded citizens sooner. Even lawmakers from his own Kuomintang party have criticized Ma this week for the government's slow response to Morakot, particularly as the public has voiced...