Word: primed
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Berlusconi a good Prime Minister? Let's just say he's not much worse than his predecessors, and he sells himself better. He hasn't solved Italy's perennial problems - runaway public debt, red tape, organized crime, corruption, a grinding justice system and aging infrastructure - but at least he's provided stability. Italy averaged almost a government a year between the end of World War II and the turn of the century. Berlusconi completed his term between 2001 and 2006; re-elected in 2008, he may well last until 2013. (Read: "Why Berlusconi Loves a Good Gaffe...
...opposition to Israel - especially the Baathist regimes in Iraq and Syria, and Egypt under Nasser - were pretty good protectors of religious pluralism. About 5% or 6% of Iraq's population in the 1970s were Christian, and some of Saddam Hussein's most prominent officials, including Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, were Christians. But since the American invasion of Iraq, Christians have fled in droves, and constitute less than 1% of the population. Syria - which survived attempts by the Bush Administration to isolate the Assad regime - is still like a living museum of otherwise forgotten Christian sects and shrines...
...they supposedly earned the family name by clearing the area of wild boar), and who served prominently in every major British military and political skirmish for a thousand years. One recent ancestor invented the tank; another helped invent television. Over the millennium the Swintons were deeded huge swatches of prime Scottish real estate; Tilda's father, Major-General Sir John Swinton, a.k.a. the Lord Lieutenant of Berwickshire, lives in the family estate, Kimmerghame...
...ages 60 to 82, to perform simple arithmetic and recall tests. To conduct the experiment, the psychologists manipulated about half of the participants into feeling stereotype threat by telling them that the entire purpose of the tests was "to examine aging effects on memory." That statement was designed to prime the participants' worry that their advanced age would affect their performance. To emphasize the issue of elderliness, the researchers also asked this group of participants to write down their age before beginning the tests...
Sunni parliamentarian Salim al-Jubouri took Muqtada al-Sadr's recent appearance in Turkey as a good sign. Sadr surfaced in Ankara ostensibly to discuss the situation in Iraq with top Turkish leaders, including President President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey is a predominantly Sunni country, many observers noted, and maybe the militant Shi'ite warlord was making a show of nascent sectarian reconciliation. "The attitude is good," says al-Jubouri, a member of the Sunni political bloc known in Arabic as Tawafiq. "But so far it's all talk, we need to see actions...