Word: regions
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ROME, Italy—Tomorrow, the G8 summit will convene in L’Aquila, the Italian city in the Abruzzo region that was destroyed by a horrific earthquake on April 6—a disaster that claimed 299 lives. Since April, the city has experienced at least half a dozen tremors (some of them quite significant), including three early this Monday morning and one Monday afternoon. Only two days later, the eight most powerful leaders in the world will meet there for two days. Almost everyone in Italy is asking him/herself the exact same question: Why? Why would...
...enormous loss of life marked a bloody milestone in Beijing's administration of the troubled zone, in which Muslim Uighurs make up the majority of the population. It also presages a severe tightening of the already viselike grip the authorities maintain on the semiautonomous region, one that could be even harsher than the crackdown that followed the violent suppression of protests in the Tibetan capital Lhasa in March 2008. Officials said several hundred protesters had already been arrested and some 90 more were still being sought on Monday afternoon. "I fear for what is to come," said Nicholas Bequelin...
...Gladney, a professor of anthropology at Pomona College in California and an author of numerous articles and books on the region, said it was particularly notable that Sunday's protests took place in Urumqi, where Uighurs make up a tiny proportion of the population. "Urumqi is the center of Chinese power and influence in Xinjiang, and there haven't been any protests there since the early '90s, which makes this very, very unusual," said Gladney. Bequelin of Human Rights Watch concurred, noting that not only is the Uighur population small, but also that the city was already under very tight...
...Alexei Polikarpov, head of the Dyuna Nesting Doll Co., also based in the Nizhny Novgorod region, shares Korotkov's dim view of the government plan. "Realistically, I'm not sure that the funds will reach all of the factories," he says. But even if they do, not all of the country's handicrafts are produced in the small factories that dot rural Russia. In Sergiyev Posad, the historic home of the nesting doll, many people still paint dolls in their living rooms and kitchens. While the government says it aims to save a traditional Russian art form, the artisans...
...British troops elsewhere in Helmand. Stationing Marines among the local population will increase the risk of such attacks, until U.S. forces are able to win over residents through providing development aid and security. To do so, they will have to overcome deeply entrenched suspicions of American aims in the region and resentment of civilian casualties inflicted during previous U.S. operations. "This operation will cause even more insecurity," says Joma Khan, a 32-year-old unemployed man in Lashkar Gah. "Because when people lose their family members or their houses get destroyed, then they join Taliban." (Read "Diplomatic Surge: Can Obama...