Word: popularization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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There are many ways of earning the spotlight, and Sheryl Weinstein went an unenviable route: she's famous for sleeping with a guy only slightly more popular than Stalin. Weinstein, the former CFO of the Jewish women's volunteer organization Hadassah, has written a new book, out Aug. 25, about her yearlong extramarital affair with swindler Bernie Madoff, titled Madoff's Other Secret: Love, Money, Bernie, and Me. Voyeurs won't be left wanting for dirt; the salacious tell-all chronicles their trysts in graphic, almost vengeful detail. Ironically, the 60-year-old Weinstein, who calls Madoff a "beast...
...chariot ride, but used here to allude to the mythical Lord Rama's quest to slay the evil Ravana) that motivated frenzied crowds of Hindus to demolish an ancient mosque in December 1992, sparking months of Hindu-Muslim carnage. When in power from 1998 to 2004, the BJP renamed popular cities with names they deemed more "native" and changed school syllabi to ingrain a "Hindu" version of Indian history among students, moving away from the greater complexities of India's diverse religious past...
...elections this year, Indian voters seem to have rejected the politics of religious polarization in favor of stability and economic growth. "Hindu nationalism worked in the 1990s, but today, it is on the margins. It goes against the popular mood," says New Delhi-based political analyst Mahesh Rangarajan. In terms of economic reforms, the BJP seems to have placed itself against a growing consensus. When in opposition, it has been an outspoken critic of the Congress party-led government's liberalization policies, seeking to speak for workers and small businesses perceived to have been disadvantaged by reforms. This marks...
...Otherwise, Bernanke mostly tried to continue Greenspan's policies, which were wildly popular at the time. But that was before the chaos, before the collapses of Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch, Fannie and Freddie, Lehman Brothers, AIG and WaMu, before Bernanke called upon decades of historical study to start dispensing money to banks and then quasi-banks and then companies that weren't banks at all. In his insider account In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke's War on the Great Panic, David Wessel details how Bernanke essentially turned himself into a fourth branch of government, exploiting a loophole...
...afternoon, most men walking the streets of Sana'a are high, or about to get high - not on any sort of manufactured narcotics, but on khat, a shrub whose young leaves contain a compound with effects similar to those of amphetamines. Khat is popular in many countries of the Arabian peninsula and the Horn of Africa, but in Yemen it's a full-blown national addiction. As much as 90% of men and 1 in 4 women in Yemen are estimated to chew the leaves, storing a wad in one cheek as the khat slowly breaks down into the saliva...