Word: small
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...interest in the books from outside collectors. In some ways, saving these old manuscripts could imperil them further. In decades past only the hardy visited Timbuktu; the journey required days of travel up the malaria-infested Niger River. Today, dozens of tourists arrive several times a week on small commercial planes from Bamako, the capital of the former French colony. Timbuktu has become a favorite jumping-off point to explore the world's biggest desert. As the modern world rushes in, attitudes among Timbuktu's youth - the generation who will take custody of all those precious manuscripts - is changing fast...
...last October, obliterating more than 700 manuscripts. Mahmoud says his family's collection of thousands of manuscripts include many with termite damage. One of his sons, Omar Ag Mohammed, shows me about 30 of the books, which are kept stashed in a rickety wooden closet in his small house. The most cherished volumes are not here, but buried in the desert. "We use ashes to protect them from the termites," he tells me. "Then we build a dome on top of them, so we know where to find them...
While the LAPD has one of the largest cadres of scanners, small towns are looking to the scanners to boost city coffers or serve as added eyes on the ground. The upscale city of Tiburon, Calif., across the bay from San Francisco, is studying whether to place a scanner at city limits as a resource in home-burglary cases. But in the traditionally liberal community, the prospect of border cameras has provoked debate. "To be under investigation simply because you entered or left Tiburon at a certain time is incredibly intrusive," Nicole Ozer, a technology expert for the California ACLU...
...This is deflating. If the rest of the country is too immature for some straight talk about the relationship between blacks and the police, delivered by our most accomplished and temperate diplomats, then the prospects for a broader dialogue about race are not good. I doubt that small talk over Heinekens will make things any better...
...rates - is a distinct possibility. Expanded coverage, perhaps including the parents of children eligible for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), is also probable. Most important for long-term reform, a system of health-care superstores - the wonks call them "exchanges" or "co-ops" - where individuals and small businesses can go to buy a plan, could be included...