Word: polyglot
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...year was 1994; the ambivalent kidnapper was British citizen Ahmad Omar Saeed Sheikh, polyglot, chess whiz and Muslim extremist fresh from the terrorist-training camps of Afghanistan. This hostage taker, now 27 years old, has resurfaced as the prime suspect in the Jan. 23 abduction in Karachi, Pakistan, of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. For those seeking Pearl's release, the fingering of Saeed was both bad news and good. On the one hand, Saeed keeps scary company. In recent years, according to Pakistani and U.S. officials, he has become a key player in al-Qaeda. U.S. intelligence suspects...
...lost some luster, its appeal for tourists endures. The main attraction: a cultural m?lange born of the island's location at the nexus of Asia's maritime trading routes. The historic streets of George Town, which is in the running for a UNESCO World Heritage listing, still throb with polyglot vibrancy. Touring the state capital's eclectic mix of Chinese, Victorian and Indian neighborhoods on foot is best, but a trishaw ride is easier on the legs and offers the additional delight of opinionated, if not always entirely intelligible, commentary from the sinewy, wizened drivers...
Still, there are already signs that we are too culturally polyglot to turn back the clock out of a yearning for comfort. The cast of The Producers' singing God Bless America on Broadway was all the more defiant for its squareness. But there was also something strangely appropriate about MTV's playing Kid Rock's American Badass in honor of rescue workers on a special episode of the video-request show TRL: the video's star-spangled obscenity, its bikers and bikinis, was somehow a perfect riposte to an act of cultural-conservative terror ordered from within a land where...
...strip clubs, casinos and after-hours clubs catering to foreigners and to Japanese who like to hang out with them. The crowd - American bond-traders in Brooks Brothers suits, visiting models, second-rate rock stars, African bouncers, Israeli street vendors, drunken U.S. Marines, Pakistani pimps and assorted polyglot freaks - reinforced the notion of Roppongi as ground zero for Tokyo's gilded, fecund nightlife...
...recent Friday night, a characteristically polyglot buzz filled the air in a Brussels pub. But at once a hush fell over the patrons, interrupted finally by a gale of laughter. Every person in the bar had turned to watch the British comedian Ali G on television. And they got all the jokes...