Word: spasms
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...millions of Iraqis, it's a familiar concern. The country has been facing its most deadly spasm of violence in a year: last month alone, attacks killed more than 600 Iraqis, many of them Shi'ites targeted by Sunni jihadis bent on sowing civil war. The country's universities have long served as the bulwark of Iraq's secular society, refuges from the sectarian strife that threatens to rip the country apart. But now violence has come to the campuses. A rocket attack on an engineering college in the heart of Baghdad two weeks ago killed two students and injured...
...Ukraine's orange one, Kyrgyzstan's leader was ejected following protests over contested elections. But where Ukraine's revolution unfolded peacefully over several months, and the Georgian uprising avoided large-scale violence, Akayev's dethronement was nearly instantaneous-the Thursday protest started tentatively-and the denouement was a spasm of rioting, theft and vandalism. But there were important similarities, too. The police no longer see dissidents as the enemy. "When the demonstrators reached the presidential offices, they commiserated with the cops about their $25-a-month salaries, and asked them to let them in without a fuss," says local journalist...
...This adopt-or-perish attitude helps explain how Thais have survived three decades of breakneck development. "In one dizzying spasm," writes Cornwel-Smith, "Thailand is experiencing the forces that took a century to transform the West." How does a nation modernize this fast without eroding the traditions that define it? In Thailand, "traditional" is now often a pejorative term, meaning low-class or old-fashioned. Many of the temple's social functions have been replaced by the mall, where, the author notes, "the principal rite is the right to shop." What matters most is looking dern. Yes, that's Thai...
Anyone who has seen a Merchant Ivory film knows that the British follow any flash of emotion with a long spasm of ritual. So it was that around Christmas, Prince Charles got down on one knee and proposed to Camilla Parker Bowles. She accepted. Then the Prince asked his mother Queen Elizabeth for official consent. The Queen, in accordance with the centuries-old Royal Marriages Act, asked Prime Minister Tony Blair for the government's approval. The PM consulted with the attorney general. Meanwhile, the Church of England chewed over the religious significance of a middle-aged, divorced prince trading...
...Around midnight, Navarro-Valls, who is a medical doctor, confirmed that there were complications to the flu and the pope had suffered acute laryngeal tracheitis and experienced a "larynx spasm crisis," a clinical way to say he'd had difficulty breathing. The cynical among the Vatican press corps believed that the "flu" that had been reported in the official bulletins was in fact a cover for something much worse. Sources at the Vatican discount that scenario, noting both the Pope's relatively robust appearance Sunday and the fact that the basic details about his condition were being released at regular...