Word: seconds
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Afghan President Hamid Karzai embarks on his second five-year term, he maintains that his primary agenda is to bring the war in Afghanistan to a peaceful close through negotiations with members of the Taliban insurgency. Karzai has gone so far as to invite his "Taliban brothers" to "embrace their land" and join him in talks. The U.S. too is growing weary of the war. As President Barack Obama finalizes his new strategy for Afghanistan and deliberates over how many more troops he should send to the front, he is facing pressure to define a clear exit strategy. What...
...third year in a row, the African nation topped the annual Corruption Perceptions Index, produced by the global watchdog group Transparency International, because of concerns over rampant piracy off its coasts and the crumbling government. More troubling for the U.S. and its allies, Afghanistan, viewed as the second most corrupt nation, is up three spots from 2008, as its Taliban insurgency has worsened. Iraq, still bedeviled by reconstruction woes, placed fifth...
Nonetheless, as Obama returns to pressing domestic issues and international flash points such as Iran and Afghanistan, two awkward numbers linger in the background: 3.5 and 8.9. The first is the rate of growth for the U.S. in the third quarter of 2009; the second is how fast China grew. And while GDP statistics are a flawed indicator, the contrast between the two economies remains stark...
Companies have long promoted healthier behavior by subsidizing gym memberships and smoking-cessation classes. But several private and public employers have started tying financial incentives to their health-insurance plans. North Carolina this year became the second state to approve an increase in out-of-pocket expenses for state workers who smoke and don't try to quit or who are morbidly obese and don't try to lose weight. Alabama was the first to pass what critics call a fat fee, in 2008, and several state insurance plans have started imposing a $25 monthly surcharge on smokers...
What factors do you consider when accepting a movie project? -Grace Guevara, Ontario, Canada Would I go watch this movie? That's probably the first thing I think about. The second is, What's the challenge? What's the risk? I think the risk for me in this role is that it doesn't really rely on anything I've used in the past. There wasn't a particular skill set I could fall back on, like singing or dancing or basketball. So I was forced to grow in other areas. The other actors in the movie are all incredibly...