Word: pliant
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...with Putin's Russia is now a dilemma that confronts the West for at least the next four years, and more if he decides to take up his legislature's offer to extend his term limit. If Yeltsin's Russia had been an economic basket case run by a pliant buffoon, Putin's is a major and growing oil producer run by an authoritarian nationalist willing to deal with the West but on an independent and often competitive basis. Its domestic politics are likely to offend the eye for some time to come, but so does the domestic politics...
...designed throughout Europe and more recently in the U.S., Calatrava has brought to the world of travel an incomparable high-tech lyricism. His structures speak plainly of engineering, of struts and cables, white concrete pylons and keen-edged glass louvers. But at the same time they suggest unmistakably the pliant forms of nature--an eye, a torso, a bird in flight--that inspire...
...mother left him in childhood for an Arab and converted to Islam?) So is he a new paradigm of loutish lucidity, a potty-mouthed Camus? Or just a racist drunk? Platform (Knopf; 259 pages), his third novel, is a heartfelt defense of sexual tourism by Westerners among the nubile, pliant and--oh, yes--penniless peoples of the Third World. The book is classic, gamy Houellebecq: witty, indigestible, willfully repellent and fiercely enjoyable...
...much for China's much-touted new era of openness. For decades, countryside leaders have adhered to a hear-no-evil, see-no-evil approach to crises that has been largely accepted by a pliant populace. But with a deadly disease potentially exploding in the provinces, some of China's 800 million farmers are finally acting out, threatening the social stability that the nation's leaders have long considered their No. 1 priority. Last week, as peasants learned that outsiders possibly exposed to the SARS virus would be quarantined in their hometowns without the locals' consent or knowledge, riots erupted...
...might think--or hope--that telemarketers would eventually run out of workers willing to endure constant rejection and abuse. Think again. Expanding global trade, combined with falling prices for international calls, has allowed telemarketers to move call centers to countries where more pliant employees line up for such work. "In the U.S., to work in a call center is not a very glorifying job," but in countries such as India and Mexico, the white-collar environment and relatively high wages have job applicants lining up, says Robert Fabro, president of Hispanic Call Centers, which oversees phone banks in 62 countries...