Word: persists
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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While the Obama administration seeks to find common cause with Iran on Afghanistan and repair a broken bilateral relationship along the way, rumors persist about Iran's alleged efforts to sow trouble in the west. For several years, Afghan and U.S. officials have said Iranian-made weapons, including a signature variety roadside bomb used in Iraq, are being used by the Taliban-led insurgency that has intensified in the western provinces. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters in mid-2007 that "given the quantities that we're seeing, it is difficult to believe that it's associated with smuggling...
...Then there is the financial system. Problems tied to bad loans persist. The latest victim came forward on Tuesday: small-business credit-card issuer Advanta said it would shut down all of its cardholders' accounts after billowing losses threatened its viability. And yet elsewhere the credit markets seemed downright rosy. The TED spread - a gauge of how willing banks are to lend to each other - hit its lowest point since the beginning of the credit crisis in the summer of 2007, and companies, including Microsoft and Wal-Mart sold a relatively sizeable $32.6 billion of debt to investors...
...many miles we run each week. Freud himself pointed out that the only thing normal is pathology, which makes applying a bell-curve-style prescription for joy more than a little reductionist. Even if all the indicators in our lives point to success, a craving for something indefinable may persist. Aristotle, for instance, thought that happiness was found in living well, and living well meant living with virtue—a distinction that the Grant would elide...
...they are." Although the U.S. does not consider itself a threat to the North, Perry continued, Pyongyang believes the opposite. The North's need of a deterrent, Perry said, has "a very clear logic." The prescription seems plain: keep engaging the North while defanging it. If the other parties persist in engagement, North Korea will return to the negotiating table. It needs the six-party talks as much as anyone...
...South Africa's economy to grow by close to 5% a year. Manuel has long complained that while he built government resources, other departments squandered them. Fifteen years since the end of apartheid, the big questions facing South Africa are less about how to improve race relations - though divisions persist - than unemployment (officially 21%, and probably much higher), poverty and inequality (which even the ANC admits has risen since apartheid) and AIDS (whose treatment former President Thabo Mbeki, bizarrely, held to be a drug company conspiracy). Service delivery has slipped since 1994, and is the big question facing...