Word: planting
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Meanwhile, in northeastern Arkansas, Jonesboro was getting word of some 1,800 new jobs from companies like wind-turbine-maker Nordex. Outside of Charleston, the Toyota plant was bringing down production but avoiding major layoffs by giving workers other tasks like training workshops. Going into the recession, each of the six cities had at least one built in advantage: either being a state capitol (Bismarck, Charleston and Cheyenne), hosting a big university (like Arkansas State in Jonesboro and West Virginia University in Morgantown) or sitting on top of a valuable natural resource (natural gas in Casper, coal in West Virginia...
...last forever. January marked a dark turning point for each of the cities. Unemployment claims started ticking upward in Jonesboro. In Cheyenne, unemployment hit 5.9%, up from 4.7% the January before, as layoffs in its warehousing and retailing industries started to filter through. Owing partly to an aluminum plant shutdown, unemployment in Charleston rose to 4.9% from 3.9% 12 months before. In Morgantown, the rate went to 3.9%, from 3.2%. Lower energy prices helped drive up the percentage of unemployed people in Casper to 4.2% from 3.4% year-over-year, and will likely have a similar effect on Bismarck...
...cost-cutting plans have terrified Opel's 26,000 workers in Germany. Over the past month, rumors of mass layoffs and plant closures have been swirling in the German media. Union leaders are clamoring for a quick decision on the bailout. But Chancellor Angela Merkel's government wants guarantees that any cash that it doles out will not flow back to GM's embattled operations in the U.S., or go down the drain if GM goes bust. (Read a TIME story on Germany's auto industry...
...Burmese word for "jatropha" sounds like an inversion of the name of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy may be the junta's most potent opposition. By inverting Suu Kyi's name, perhaps the superstitious junta believes that the kyet-suu plant will cause her democracy movement to wither away. (Read about Burma's ethnic minorities...
...Rangoon, I watched on television as generals in oversized camouflage hats were pictured shoveling earth to plant jatropha seedlings. Burmese state television shows an inordinate number of ribbon-cutting ceremonies and ground-breaking rituals, in which military men inaugurate the latest project and broadcasters congratulate their efforts. Eventually, as so often happens in Rangoon, the power failed and the T.V. screen went black. Biodiesel may already be contributing to a green solution in some parts of the world, but it hasn't saved Burma...