Word: optional
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...January housing should operate on an “opt-out” framework. All students should have the default option of staying in their dorm rooms from the day after the end of winter recess to the day that marks the start of spring term. Many Harvard students will want (and ought to have the option) to spend their January working on extracurricular activities on campus or at jobs and internships in the Cambridge and Boston areas—two options that would be much less feasible without guaranteed campus housing. Renting an apartment is costly and more difficult...
China's huge appetite is making some foreign governments nervous. Australia blocked the Minmetals deal with Oz, citing national security, forcing the Chinese firm to revise the offer to exclude a valuable gold and copper mine. And Libya exercised its option to buy Venerex Energy, a producer based in Calgary, Canada, whose biggest asset is an oil and gas field 100 miles (160 km) southwest of Tripoli. That thwarted a $390 million bid that China National Petroleum Corp. had made to acquire Venerex. Beijing hasn't done itself any favors either. It blocked--on antitrust grounds that analysts considered flimsy...
...tougher after the recent Israeli offensive in Gaza and a new right-wing government in Israel ... There's a lot of cynicism and concern about what the new [Israeli] government means here - and obviously a lot of despair after what happened in Gaza. But we have no option but to pick ourselves up from here. What happens in these next couple of months will really be critical. We need three elements: a credible political negotiation for a two-state solution; a program of major change on the West Bank, and an easing of the blockade in Gaza...
...really that simple? Afghans like Khan say only a small fraction of the insurgency consists of hardened jihadis willing to fight to the death; the rest are ordinary, poor villagers who simply haven't been given a better option. Khan estimates that the insurgents earn from $100 to $200 a month, money that comes from the illegal trade in lumber. Similarly, analysts in Afghanistan's south, where U.S. and coalition forces are fighting an insurgency funded by the opium trade, argue that the U.S. policy of poppy eradication has only fueled the fighting by eliminating income without providing an alternative...
That's one reason failure in Afghanistan is not an option. An Afghan businessman adds another. He lived through the resistance to the Soviets in the 1980s, only to see the U.S. abandon Afghanistan when they left. Another betrayal, he thinks, could produce the same blowback that helped lead to 9/11. "If Afghanistan is sold out again," he says, "you would be basically giving 60% of the nation into the hands of the people who want to destroy the West. And I can tell you that these young Afghans are ingenious, they are creative and they know...