Word: plaines
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...June 27, Robert Mugabe stole an election. He did so in plain view of journalists, aid workers, diplomats and heads of state. His brutality before the vote resulted in the deaths of about 100 Zimbabweans, the detention of some 2,000, injury to 10,000 and the displacement of more than 200,000. His regime systematically burned down homes and tortured people who had the nerve to suggest they might choose a new President of Zimbabwe. Under Mugabe, life expectancy has dropped to 36 years...
...didn't have to. In an essay six years earlier, he had already attacked by name the most famous American funnyman of all, Mark Twain. His humor, Arnold sniffed, was "so attractive to the Philistine." It would be truer to say it was attractive to anyone who valued plain speaking and the kind of deadly wit that could cut through the cant and hypocrisy surrounding any topic, no matter how sensitive: war, sex, religion, even race. Twain was righteous without being pious, angry for all the right reasons and funny in all the right ways. You might say he gave...
...Fruits of Labor No sector illustrates the squandered opportunities of Med trade better than agriculture. Though plagued by poor management in North Africa and market-distorting subsidies in Europe, farming is ripe with possibilities. If they are not taken advantage of, however, the consequences are plain: farmworkers in North Africa will head for Europe. Last year, as many as 1 million are believed to have left the poorer shores of the Mediterranean. (The figure includes not just those from the Maghreb, but also migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Asia, drawn to people-trafficking routes that transit...
Grand Tower sits along one of the Mississippi's narrowest points, across from Missouri. A levee runs along what remains of Main Street, but it's weak. That puts Grand Tower in a flood plain. Floods have repeatedly battered the town. And a handful of folks here recall 1947, when the Mississippi sent some 1,000 residents racing for the rocky hills above town...
...says Mayor Ellett. Nevertheless, in June 1991, FEMA suspended Grand Tower from the insurance program altogether. "Taxpayers will not be called upon to put money back into a flood area if the community hasn't done its part by enforcing the ordinance," says David Schein, FEMA's senior flood-plain-management specialist. That essentially means the only assistance the Federal Government is likely to provide is temporary shelter and food. "That's really humanitarian," snaps Ellett. "We don't have million-dollar homes here. We have $30,000 and $20,000 homes. And we're hurting...