Word: plight
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...Hussein's plight reflects one of the burgeoning problems of the global downturn. Countries that built successful economies in part on the backs of cheap migrant workers now face upheaval in their labor markets. In places like Taiwan, Malaysia, South Korea, and the Gulf states, companies are folding, factories are closing, and thousands are losing their jobs - meaning migrant workers like Hussein are being shoved out of the labor pool and into a tenuous half-life on the margins of the world economy...
...Korean exiles and refugees. That fact was probably not lost on Lee and Ling. Many of the refugees get help from human rights groups. One such activist, Tim Peters, who has visited this region in the past, thinks the two American TV journalists were trying to report on the plight of stateless orphans, the offspring of trafficked North Korean women repatriated back to the North. "It's a mushrooming problem," says Peters, who notes that authorities have been making it harder for foreign journalists to cover the refugee issue there since the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics...
...That's the plight of most everyone in Burma, even the ethnic Burmese. Balancing on a narrow bamboo raft in the middle of the Irrawaddy River, ethnic Burmese migrant Aung Tun sifts for specks of gold. Over the past decade, Chinese demand for gold has skyrocketed, and thousands of ethnic Burmese have moved to Kachin to pan for the mineral, as well as mine jade. But for the right to float his raft on the river, Aung Tun must pay fees to the Burmese government, the Burmese police and the KIO. If the specks of gold...
...state of California is in a very, very precipitous economic plight. It's in the toilet," says Ammiano. "It looks very, very bleak, with layoffs and foreclosures, and schools closing or trying to operate four days a week. We have one of the highest rates of unemployment we've ever had. With any revenue ideas, people say you have to think outside the box, you have to be creative, and I feel that the issue of the decriminalization, regulation and taxation of marijuana fits that bill. It's not new, the idea has been around, and the political will...
...Foreign Affairs, it took the Bank of Japan nine years to bring the interest rate that banks pay on overnight money to 0%; the U.S. Fed managed that in 16 months following the beginning of the credit crisis in the summer of 2007. Japan - in desperate denial about the plight of proud companies - long delayed using public money to recapitalize banks. The U.S. starting doing so within a year of the crisis's start...