Word: primed
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Among the many hands that Barack Obama will likely shake on his inaugural trip to Asia as U.S. President will be that of a soft-spoken general who happens to represent one of the world's most repressive regimes. Obama's planned joint appearance on Nov. 15 with Burmese Prime Minister Thein Sein, at an Association of Southeast Asian Nations' confab on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Singapore, will mark the first time since the era of Lyndon B. Johnson that an American President has spent any face-time with a member of the Burmese...
...been James Tobin's turn. Close to four decades since the Yale economist proposed a levy on foreign-exchange transactions - or a "Tobin tax," as the suggestion became known - the idea is enjoying a new lease of life. At a meeting of G-20 finance ministers last weekend, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown suggested the group of leading countries consider the tax to establish "a better economic and social contract between financial institutions and the public based on trust and a just distribution of risks and rewards...
...which leaves the tax as a basic means of raising funds. And in that respect, there may be simpler methods. Because of the lukewarm response from other countries to Brown's suggestion, the British government was quick to reduce the levy to one of several ideas the Prime Minister had for recouping taxpayers' billions. Another idea - that banks themselves pay into a central rescue fund, with contributions determined by a lender's size or risk exposure - could yet prove more popular...
...President did not appear pleased hours later when he was asked about the decision on an international stage, in a ceremonial room at the Kantei, the office of Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. Obama's initial reaction was to say that Attorney General Eric Holder would be explaining the decision. "I don't want to preempt his news conference," the President said. But he realized he had to say more. "This is a prosecutorial decision, as well as a national-security decision," Obama continued, again distancing himself from the plan. "I am absolutely convinced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will...
...Billed as "the biggest tobacco exhibition in Asia," Tabinfo 2009 has been years in the making. Nonetheless, the meeting apparently caught Thailand's government by surprise. Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, who has said he was unaware of the conference until two weeks before it started, ordered government and tourism agencies not to do anything to promote or support it after activists presented him with a petition opposing the conference that contained more than 82,000 signatures. Thailand's state-run tobacco monopoly withdrew its exhibitions and sponsorship of a buffet breakfast for industry representatives just days before the conference began...