Word: oiled
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...post-Cold War Washington, Hugo Chavez may soon make his presence felt with regular Americans - at the gas pump. Chavez, elected president last November by an overwhelming majority, is moving quickly to consolidate control of his nation?s political institutions, and from there to use the nation?s considerable oil revenues to finance populist spending. This may sound merely like some improbable '60s flashback, but Venezuela?s state-owned oil company is the largest oil supplier to the U.S., and that ?- together with Chavez?s attempts to breathe new life into the decrepit international oil cartel, OPEC ?- could spell trouble...
...still overwhelmingly behind the 45-year-old former paratrooper and failed coup leader. "Most Venezuelans support Chavez because the country?s traditional parties were so corrupt," says TIME Latin America bureau chief Tim McGirk. But enthused though they may be by Chavez's promise to share the country?s oil wealth with the impoverished majority, they may be disappointed in him in the long run. "Chavez may be able to use oil revenues to provide health, education and social services to the poor, but at the end of the day he still has to find jobs for them," says McGirk...
Then came a couple of oil crises and an army of wickedly shrewd engineers from a country called Japan, and cars were reduced to a lowest common denominator that was all about efficiency and reliability. Design took a backseat to gas mileage, and the result was that one car on the road looked a lot like the next, if not exactly like a Toyota Camry or Honda Accord. Smooth with little edge on the outside, functional within--how many cup holders does yours have? Even luxury cars, from Lexus to Lincoln, have become all but generic, right down to their...
...diplomats still hope they can scuttle this launch at the negotiating table. They've done it before. Pyongyang agreed to abandon plans to convert nuclear-reactor fuel into nuclear weaponry when the U.S. and Japan agreed to pay for oil imports and build two new reactors. And South Korea's President Kim Dae Jung has embarked on a policy of engagement, offering food and investment from South Korean companies. As thanks, North Korea has sent fishing boats into South Korean waters and provoked a naval clash (Seoul's forces sank one ship), dispatched a suspected spy vessel into Japan...
...invasion of Chechnya in 1994. Russian federal forces have been continually engaged in action against Chechen raiders eager to see the coastal province of Dagestan annexed into land-locked Chechnya. The province is of vital strategic importance to Russia, representing 70% of the nation's frontage on the oil-producing Caspian Sea. It's a nightmare war: Russian troops and Dagestani cops have also had to tackle local Islamic militants intent on independence, and ruthless criminal gangs armed with world-class weapons. But Moscow insists on enforcing one law in particular: no secession from Mother Russia, even if the union...