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...grubbiness of buffalo-hide hunters in the 1800s: "Their blankets would get so full of lice and bedbugs that they'd lay them on anthills so that ants could carry away the larvae. The hunters would often eat little else besides buffalo. Beginners, or 'tenderfeet,' would start out eating prime cuts, but within months they suffered nutrient deficiencies that caused their tongues to break out in lesions ... Some hunters seasoned meat with gunpowder for a peppery effect. If they were away from water, they'd open a dead buffalo's stomach and use their fingers to filter out the bits...
...Thai football has lost its way, so has the country. Within weeks of Reid's arrival, two people were killed and hundreds injured in antigovernment riots in Bangkok. Protesters occupied the offices of beleaguered Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat, and then, on Nov. 25, stormed the capital's airport. Tourists and investors are fleeing the country, the stock market is tanking. The famous Thai smile is fading fast. A Bangkok pollster calculated that the nation's "Gross Domestic Happiness Index" measured a mere 4.84 out of 10, the lowest for almost three years. Cheer up, Peter Reid? He's probably...
...bankrolling Reid's generous salary? Could it be former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the self-exiled billionaire who - so his enemies claim - was pulling the strings behind the Somchai government? Thaksin was toppled in a 2006 military coup and the following year bought Manchester City, a struggling football club where Reid was once player-manager. Sentenced in absentia in October to two years in jail for conflict of interest, Thaksin remains a deeply divisive figure, loved by rural Thais but loathed by the urban élite...
This all amounts to the first serious test of "Putinomics" - the domestic policies put in place by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin during the two terms of his presidency from 2000 to 2008, and continued by his successor, President Dmitri Medvedev. While oil money was pouring into the state's coffers, the Kremlin was able to dispense largesse to ordinary Russians through generous social spending programs and hefty pay raises awarded by the monolithic state companies that dominate the economy. Jobs were plentiful, and over the past five years, average wages have risen by 25% annually. Even then there was money...
...having trouble paying their debts - including Oleg Deripaska, a metals tycoon who until recently was Russia's richest man. It is also playing an increasingly intrusive role in the private sector. At a meeting in Moscow on Nov. 25, for example, Igor Shuvalov, Putin's First Deputy Prime Minister, told the nation's major retailers that the Kremlin would ensure they gained access to credit on condition that they demonstrated "social responsibility" by not raising prices...