Word: plight
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Hollywood, currently nursing a weapons-grade crush on Africa, has also turned its klieg lights on the plight of its children. Perhaps you heard about a couple of celebrities adopting kids from there? Fascination with the continent's woes dates back to Bob Geldof's famine-relief concerts in the mid-'80s. Bono picked up the baton in the '90s, and now every African nation seems to have its own celebrity benefactor. George Clooney has made the situation in Darfur one of his key talking points. Madonna is building an orphan center in Malawi. Brad Pitt helped produce and Nicole...
...others voiced concern about the mayor's ability to focus on the business of the city - and the morale of his administration. Recently, Newsom fended off critics who suggested he should have attended the Conference of Mayors in Washington D.C., where 260 U.S. city leaders gathered to discuss the plight of their jurisdictions, rather than jetting off to the Swiss ski town of Davos for the World Economic Forum. In defense, Newsom's press secretary Peter Ragone tells TIME that "The mayor's commitment to the city and getting the work of the city done is as strong...
...births in 2000. The program was initially spurred by a desire to save the species from extinction. But in 1975 China set aside 10 nature reserves for the bears, covering almost 1 million hectares in Sichuan province. That move, bolstered by years of worldwide publicity for the panda's plight, has reduced the threat. China's population of about 1,600 wild pandas has been stable for several years, says Fan Zhiyong...
...with a simple directness. His call to arms against the plight of the homeless in the bitter winter of 1954, after a woman froze to death in Paris with her eviction notice in hand, remains one of the most broadly cited expressions of human compassion in the French language. Once he became famous, he was happy to embarrass those who honored him into taking real action. In 1992 he was named a Grand Officer in the French Legion of Honor, but refused to wear the insignia until the government found a humane solution for the plight of 300 African families...
...Abb? Pierre's death comes just weeks after activists for the homeless erected scores of tents along Paris's Canal Saint Martin to call attention to their plight. Chirac earlier this month proposed that the "right to lodging" be inscribed in the French constitution, a measure that Abb? Pierre had long advocated. Now the government has proposed that the enabling legislation be named the "law of Abb? Pierre." Thus conceived, it is sure to sail through parliament on January 30, a concrete legacy to a life that transfigured France...