Word: specter
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Nevertheless, the specter of a communist country of 1.3 billion people can spook even close economic partners. In the eyes of some Australians, it is one thing to sell what lies underground to China, but rather another to let Chinese companies own Australian resources themselves. Twice this year, Chinese state-owned enterprises have snapped up major Australian mining stakes. But the biggest deal didn't go through. The state-owned Aluminum Corp. of China, better known as Chinalco, was supposed to take a $19.5 billion stake in Australian-British Rio Tinto, which controls, among other mines, vast iron-ore deposits...
...resort to violence. Following the 9/11 attacks in the U.S., Beijing convinced Washington to list the little-known East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) as a terrorist organization. Some Uighurs were captured by coalition forces in Afghanistan and sent to Guantánamo, but many have subsequently been released. The specter of Uighur terrorism loomed over Xinjiang after a series of attacks and bombings hit the province during the build-up to last year's Beijing Olympics. The extent of the ETIM's tactical capabilities and its connections to other more prominent terrorist outfits remains unclear. Other exiled Uighur movements...
Although the development once again raises the specter of creating humans in a petri dish or custom-designing egg and sperm cells for reproduction, lead author Karim Nayernia says that was not his team's intention. Rather, the experiment was a proof of concept that stem cells can generate any cell in the body - not only the dozens of tissues that make up the human body but also those egg and sperm cells that may give rise to altogether new bodies. "Other cell types don't generate the next generation," says Nayernia, a professor of stem-cell biology at Newcastle...
...Tehran Tiananmen? The harsh language used by Ahmadinejad and the Revolutionary Guards to describe opposition protests - and their invoking of the specter of an Eastern European-style "velvet revolution" backed by the West - appeared to be generating a narrative that would justify a bloody crackdown, a massive use of military force that would terrify the opposition into submission. Clearly the limited violence unleashed by the Ahmadinejad camp thus far has failed to intimidate Mousavi and his supporters. But while it would almost certainly empty the streets, the "nuclear option" of a Tiananmen Square-style crackdown would be a potentially fatal...
...specter of an Islamist threat has often worked in favor of the region's governments. After 9/11, U.S. Central Asian strategy was dictated largely by the Department of Defense under Donald Rumsfeld. Uzbekistan, ruled its entire independent life by the iron-fisted Islam Karimov, was brought into the fold as a staging ground for American operations in Afghanistan, as well as a willing accomplice in the renditions of suspected terrorists. That cozy partnership ended in 2005 when the Uzbek army gunned down hundreds of civilians protesting for reform in the Ferghana Valley under the pretense that it was curbing...