Word: placide
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...dressed as scarved Kazakh peasants. When the film broke down at the start of its run, Baron Cohen, director Larry Charles and visiting fireman Michael Moore passed the time by answering questions. The screening was eventually postponed until the following night, leading to some grumbles from the normally ultra-placid TIFF audience - although the headline on Defamer.com, "Toronto Film Festival Projectionist Slain By Angry Borat Fans," was a slight exaggeration...
Even during placid times, Mexico's annual Informe, or State of the Union address, makes for high political theater. And so when outgoing President Vicente Fox arrived at the San Lázaro Congress building in Mexico City to give his final Informe last Friday night, Mexicans were ready for some drama. And they got it. Congressmen loyal to leftist presidential contender Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has spent the past two months protesting the results of the July 2 election, jumped from their seats and surrounded the broad podium, shouting "Fuera!" (Out!). So obdurate were the legislators that...
...Mahfouz did not always play the placid cultural observer. He was an early and vocal supporter of normalizing relations with Israel (some Arab countries banned his books in response.) His Children of Gabalawi, although set in modern times (it was published in 1959), features characters that loosely parallel figures in the Bible and the Koran. The novel's boldness attracted the attention of Islamic extremists, and in 1994 a young fanatic attacked him, stabbing him in the neck. Mahfouz survived, but lost much of the use of his right-and writing-hand. (His attacker fared worse: he was hung...
...leader as magnificent as T.R. at such a crucial time--the start of the modern era. Sadly, we have not seen the likes of him since. I wonder which of our contemporaries, if any, will grace the cover of TIME 100 years from now. MAYR MALOOL Lake Placid...
Even before Shalit's kidnapping, it would have been a stretch to call the atmosphere placid. For months Gaza militants have fired homemade rockets at Israeli towns, usually missing but causing some injuries and great misery, and drawing Israeli artillery barrages in response. Tensions escalated early last month after seven members of a Palestinian family died in a Gaza beach explosion, which Palestinians blamed on an errant Israeli artillery shell. (Israel denied responsibility.) That prompted Hamas leaders to renounce a 16-month-old cease-fire with Israel, giving an array of Palestinian guerrilla groups the green light to stage...