Word: regionalization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When describing Xinjiang, silk road clichés never grow old. China's westernmost region is a vast territory of deserts and mountains, where peaks of black sand descend toward ancient oasis towns. In many of its cities, men still haggle over livestock in dusty markets and purchase blades from blacksmiths whose families have stayed in the craft for centuries. The faces of its Uighur inhabitants, a Turkic Muslim ethnic group, tell of Xinjiang's history as a crossroads for caravans and civilizations: an astonishing array of gray, hazel and blue eyes, fringed by brown or black or even blond...
...Xinjiang's Chinese rulers, the region's deep history matters far less than its political future. The name Xinjiang itself in Mandarin means "new frontier" - a sign both of its remoteness from Beijing and the difficulty of governing it. That challenge centers on the Uighurs, who comprise the region's majority population and claim a linguistic and cultural heritage that is markedly different from that of the rest of China. And while six decades of communist Chinese rule have brought tremendous prosperity to some, modernization has also raised a profound disconnect between the region's old inhabitants and newer arrivals...
...what a multitude of challenges has been unleashed upon the Asia-Pacific region in just a week's time. In late September, tropical storm Ketsana killed more than 160 people in Vietnam and nearly 300 in the Philippines, submerging 80% of Manila. Just hours before Sumatra was jolted, another earthquake triggered a tsunami that inundated the Samoan islands and Tonga, extinguishing some 180 lives. In the latest catastrophe, southern India was ravaged by some of the worst torrential rains in decades, killing around 300 people and leaving some 2 million others homeless. (See pictures of tsunami striking South Pacific...
...natural disaster - related fatalities occurred in Asia, according to the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington-based research group. At a World Health Organization summit last month, health ministers from Southeast Asia announced that from 1998 to 2009, 750,000 people had perished from natural disasters in their region alone...
...suicide bomber disguised as a soldier walked into the fortified headquarters of the U.N. Food Program in Pakistan by asking to use the bathroom and set off an explosion that killed five people. The latest in a string of attacks against foreign aid workers in the region, the Oct. 5 bombing was particularly disquieting given the ease with which the perpetrator infiltrated the heavily protected compound, just steps from President Asif Ali Zardari's residence. A Taliban spokesman confirmed that the group was responsible for the incident, the deadliest in the Pakistani capital since April. In the aftermath...