Word: patchwork
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...this was an Ahmadinejad ploy, it might well backfire. The Israeli response has seriously damaged Lebanon economically. The Lebanese patchwork of constituencies that governs the country may now conclude that it can no longer tolerate a heavily armed Hizballah substate in the south. And if it can be proved that Iran instigated the mess, the members of the U.N. Security Council might be nudged toward a tougher stance on the nuclear issue-and the threat of international sanctions, which could have terrible consequences for Iran's oily economy. But it is also clear now that a major consequence of George...
...scandal highlighted the patchwork system that currently oversees the few labs conducting cutting-edge research on human embryonic stem cells. With no rules to regulate the field in the U.S., most labs here abide by regulations created by their own institution - while others overseas have to walk the line between the requirements of their own institutes and national laws that have been passed to govern certain parts of the field. (In South Korea, for example, it is now illegal to pay women to donate eggs...
...Indian companies have improved, and decrepit infrastructure adds about 2% to 5% onto the costs of doing business in India compared to China, estimates Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. Much of India's clothing and textile industry, for example, remains a patchwork of smaller producers that can't match the scale of Chinese companies. A McKinsey study found that Indian apparel makers are half as productive as Chinese firms due to poor management and a lack of training and technology. McKinsey figures that a man's shirt costs about 23% more to produce in India than it does in China...
...cooperation comes at a time of fundamental change in Somalia's capital, which like most of the rest of the country has had no functioning government for 15 years. During that time, southern Somalia has been ruled by warlords, who have carved the Horn of Africa nation into a patchwork of fiefdoms. The warlords fought U.S. peacekeepers sent to secure United Nations' aid deliveries during a terrible drought in the early 1990s, but some are now believed to be backed by the U.S. Those warlords have now fled the capital, or are holed up and surrounded by Islamic militias...
Even if the election does run smoothly, Congo's worst problems will surely persist. The country is less a functioning nation-state than a patchwork of disjointed cantons. While the war's messy front line no longer exists, trade between the east and the west is almost nonexistent. "It's as if we are still two countries," says Dr. Pascal Ngoy, a health coordinator for the IRC. That division is felt most keenly in the provinces and is made worse by the long-standing perception that the capital doesn't care about the country's farthest reaches. The local administration...