Word: palau
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Scout shooting cans at the county dump has got more military training than these guys.' GEORGE CLARKE, a lawyer for Anwar Hassan, one of 17 Uighurs who languished for three years at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility before the island nation of Palau agreed to temporarily resettle the Chinese Muslim group...
...following the Spanish-American War, and continued to change hands throughout the 20th century. Japan was awarded control in the post-World War I Treaty of Versailles, and set about confiscating and redistributing tribal land, replacing the matrilineal system with a patrilineal one. After World War II, Palau became a U.S. trust territory; it gained independence in 1994, but still relies on the U.S. for government aid and defense. Palauans are among a select group of nations permitted to serve in the U.S. military without permanent U.S. residency. (See pictures from inside Guantanamo Bay's detention facilities...
...While relatively calm in recent years, Palau is no stranger to political unrest. After it switched from being administered by the U.S. to a republic in 1981, its first president, Haruo I. Remeliik, was assassinated in his driveway in 1985; the killers were never caught. Three years later, Palau's third president, Lazarus Salii, committed suicide after being accused of bribery; months earlier, his personal aide had been convicted of firing a gun into the home of the Speaker of the House of Delegates...
...More recently, it's been external pressures Palau has been worried about. It joined a group of a dozen island nations that successfully petitioned the U.N. General Assembly for a June 3rd resolution declaring climate change a security issue. The goal is to persuade the Security Council to address the threat posed by rising sea levels to the nations' existences. Scientists predict that many of Palau's smaller islands may become uninhabitable as they sink into...
...Between its U.N. diplomacy and its willingness to accept the Uighur detainees, Palau is drawing more international attention in one year than most Pacific islands get in a decade. Still, most Americans probably know it for a completely different reason: Palau was one of the few locations to be featured twice on the reality show Survivor. As it prepares to receive 17 potential new castaways, the question of how long Palau itself might survive remains unanswered...