Word: pasts
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Things have calmed down a lot," the boyish 41-year-old muses as he walks through a fair in Elkton, a town on the upper reaches of the Chesapeake Bay. Strolling past a booth for the Sons of Confederate Veterans and a church stand selling handmade floral crosses, Kratovil meets Donna Horgan, 54, a Cecil County real estate agent and a lifelong Democratic activist, who urges him to vote for a health-care bill - any bill. "Continuing to say no is not really an answer," Kratovil replies in agreement. Horgan is left with the definite impression that Kratovil will vote...
Finding something that liberal voters can accept and moderates will tolerate is a challenge Kratovil shares with nearly 50 other freshmen and sophomores in districts won by George W. Bush and McCain in the past two elections. President Obama's party could lose 40 seats next November, according to political expert Charlie Cook, if Democrats fail to pass health-care reform and polls continue their downward spiral. "The kinds of conditions that create wave elections are the kinds of conditions we're seeing right now," he says. "Kratovil is in bad shape - as bad as an incumbent...
...past month, the government, which is Sunni-dominated, has stepped up its military offensive against Shi'ite rebels, known as Houthis, whom officials blame for the killings. It's a continuation of a war that began in 2004, when the government killed a Houthi leader, raising fears among Yemeni followers of the Zaydi sect of Shi'ite Islam that they were being targeted for eradication by the government and Sunni extremists. So far, thousands have died and hundreds of thousands have been displaced by the fighting, mostly in the northern province of Saada. The government has used aerial bombardment...
...doesn't help that several high-level al-Qaeda operatives - including al-Wahishi - have mysteriously escaped from Yemeni prisons in the past, or that former inmates of the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo have resurfaced as active operatives in Yemen. But Johnsen thinks the U.S. is too focused on a military solution. "Obviously you have to eliminate key fighters, but the U.S. has done that before," he says. "Unless you address the underlying issues - especially poverty - you'll just be fighting a different incarnation of al-Qaeda every few years...
...plan to help the country go cold turkey off khat. And the public is inclined to complacency about the failings of the government. "You sit up discussing all your problems and think you've solved everything, but in fact you haven't done anything in the past four hours because you've just been chewing khat, and all your problems actually got worse," says Adel al-Shojaa, a professor of political science at Sana'a University and the head of an organization opposed to the use of the narcotic. "All the decisions you've made are bad because you made...