Word: parred
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...legislation is particularly embarrassing in light of the fact that it is nearly unique among modern democracies. Every other developed nation’s upper house of parliament lacks parity with its lower, popularly elected house. Britain’s House of Lords, for instance, has not been on par with the House of Commons at least since 1911, and, in France and Germany, the lower house has the formal ability to assert its supremacy over the upper house in cases of deadlock...
...Elections here are high-spending, festive occasions that are good for the economy. But cheating and violence are also par for the course. Commission on Elections director James Jimenez says the debut of electronic voting in 2010 should eliminate two major sources of election crime: trying to fix the outcome by threats of violence again election officials during the vote-counting period, and the practice of dagdag bawas, or padding and shaving votes. "Both should be rendered extinct by an automated vote count in which there will be no opportunity to change the outcome," says Jimenez...
...then there's remuneration. Both Afghan soldiers and police officers were recently granted a 40% pay rise, bringing the base salary for a new police officer or soldier to about $165 a month - almost on par with what the Taliban offer their fighters. Like many Afghans, many of the new army recruits are uneducated and illiterate, so it will be difficult to develop the capabilities that are essential for effectively running an army or a police force, such as seamless logistics planning, accurate weapons training or even clear police reports...
...demographic that makes up the primary readership of this newspaper, you can probably identify with my friends who use smartphones. At any given college function, it seems as if the number of people with BlackBerries or iPhones outnumber the number of those without. A busy and overscheduled lifestyle is par for the course in this country in general—and students here, whose mantra can be summed up “I’ll sleep when I die,” are particularly prone to the lifestyle that the smartphone represents...
...hotly debated on Catholic blogs and religion websites like Beliefnet.com. Right-wing Catholics lobbied the Boston archdiocese to refuse the Kennedy family a church funeral. Robert Royal of the Faith & Reason Institute called O'Malley's decision to go ahead with the Mass a "grave scandal" on a par with the sexual-abuse crisis...