Word: primed
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...year has nearly drawn to a close, and what a year it has been. It was the year of “hope” and “change,” but also the year that “sub-prime mortgage” replaced “WMD” in the American lexicon. Recent history has been particularly depressing: Between Blagojevich and billion dollar bailouts, there has been little to be pleased about this past month. I still smile whenever I hear about the Somali pirates, but I have a feeling that even this may grow...
Thailand's Democrat Party hasn't won a popular national election in more than a decade. But on Dec. 15, Abhisit Vejjajiva, the 44-year-old leader of the oldest Thai political party, was chosen in a slender majority by the country's parliament as the nation's fifth Prime Minister in a year. Beleaguered Thais hope that his leadership will put an end to a turbulent few years during which one PM was deposed in an army coup and a sustained anti-government protest movement ended in the removal of three others, as well as the takeover and closure...
...internationally respected as the incoming, Oxford-educated Prime Minister is, Abhisit helms a coalition that is shaky at best. In order to form a government, the Democrat Party aligned with one of its most vocal critics, Newin Chidchob. An erstwhile ally of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who now lives in exile after being convicted in absentia on abuse of power charges, Newin has made his reputation as a hard-nosed pork-barrel specialist. His brand of politics hardly hews to the more urban-centered intellectualism of the Democrats. Indeed, Thailand may be returning to the days of weak coalitions...
...Nevertheless, after a dispiriting few months in which Thais have seen their country's near-term economic prognosis go from ailing to moribund - in large part because of the anti-government protests that convulsed Bangkok and scared away tourists and foreign investors since August - the prospect of a Prime Minister who will not cause hundreds of thousands of yellow-shirted protesters to flood the streets must be a relief. True, Thaksin's supporters, who wore red clothes during their rallies to contrast with the opposition's yellow shirts, are hardly pleased. But in a sign that there...
...face it, the irate Iraqi journalist who hurled his size-10 shoes, one at a time, at President George W. Bush during a press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad on Sunday had pretty good aim. If it weren't for the President's quick duck and weave, he might have had more than just a surprised look on his face. "So what if a guy threw his shoe at me?" Bush said, brushing off the incident. Perhaps we should chalk that statement up as yet another of the President's cultural misunderstandings of Iraq...