Word: primed
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...better. Concern for Britain's national security pushed the British government in 2006 to order a halt to a separate SFO probe into allegations that BAE paid bribes to secure business with Saudi Arabia in the mid-1980s. The inquiry into the $69 billion "Al-Yamamah" arms deals, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted, risked the withdrawal of Saudi cooperation on intelligence matters. BAE always denied any wrongdoing, but in a 2008 report on its business ethics commissioned by the company in the midst of the affair, BAE bosses "acknowledged that the company did not in the past pay sufficient...
...Kenyan ancestry might lead him to give their country some kind of preferential treatment. Instead, Obama seems determined to use what influence he has in the way a parent might withhold love from an errant child. "I sometimes think Obama's roots in Kenya can actually be a problem," Prime Minister Raila Odinga said in a recent newspaper interview. "Kenya is always being held to different standards compared to neighboring countries." (See Barack Obama's family tree...
...gaffe heard around the globe. Last November, just two days after Barack Obama's historic election victory, the world's collective jaw dropped when Silvio Berlusconi quipped that the next U.S. President was "young, handsome and even has a good tan." Though the Italian Prime Minister refused to apologize for the failed attempt at humor, Obama and his aides gave Berlusconi a pass. The incoming President was not going to be sidetracked by a diplomatic incident with a man already notorious as a loose cannon. Berlusconi kept his place that week on Obama's initial round of phone calls...
...Italy, where immigration has skyrocketed in the past decade, racism is becoming a front-burner issue. Aly Baba Faye, regional director in Rome of the Anti-Racism Observatory, says the Prime Minister's comments are indicative of attitudes in Italy and unhelpful in changing prejudices. "Berlusconi thinks he's funny, but he's not," says Faye, an Italian citizen who emigrated from Senegal 30 years ago. "For one world leader to talk about the skin color of another is utterly disrespectful and sets a bad example for ordinary folk." Faye says Berlusconi's comments make it more likely that people...
...Iran have shared economic interests, and according to some estimates, China has some $100 billion tied up in Iranian oil and gas reserves. Both countries have been unwilling to rebuke their strategic partner in the past. A watered-down set of sanctions might be disappointing to those, like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who want to "cripple" Iran. But they wouldn't be out of the ordinary; the U.S. has punished countries for everything from harboring terrorists to mistreating animals. "Sanctions may not do much to the so-called enemy, but they do feel warm to those imposing them," wrote...