Word: stark
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Still, the looming Berlusconi-Veltroni showdown does have the virtue of presenting a stark contrast between two very different politicians. The 71-year-old center-right leader hails from the industrial north, having made his mark as a real estate mogul and media entrepreneur, and becoming Italy's richest man. Berlusconi came into politics in 1994 billed as the ultimate outsider, scoffing at Rome's stuffy establishment and passing his downtime singing Neapolitan love ballads and frequenting his palatial villa in Sardinia's Porto Cervo. His refusal to resolve a gargantuan conflict of interest, as owner of Italy's three...
...Indeed, in stark contrast with decades of French intervention to save beleaguered friendly governments in its former African colonies, Elysée spokesman David Martinon stressed that the focus of the French government was "assuring that all the arrangements had been made to assure the safety of our nationals". Paris dispatched a French Army Airbus to N'Djamena Saturday to begin an airlift back to France when the situation allows it, but showed none of the readiness to put down a rebellion that had had been par for the course when Paris still considered Francophone Africa as France's back...
...steady flow is a stark contrast to other crises in Africa. Last week, for example, the International Rescue Committee issued a report saying that 45,000 continue to die every month as a result of Congo's civil war. Zimbabwe's economy is still deteriorating fast - well beyond the international spotlight. And Amnesty International said Friday that conflict between the army and armed groups in Chad is only getting worse...
...plot that propels the novella, but rather the intimate, unfolding portrait of village life in eastern Nepal that Chettri sketches in masterfully stark but occasionally lyrical prose - like a brisk, cold brook dappled with sun. Chettri vividly conjures the social and natural landscapes in which Dhané's miserable story takes place, from trade councils lorded by ruthless landowners, to placid livestock pastures and swollen rice paddies pleating the hills. The book "might not entertain its readers, because that is not its aim," Chettri has written. "I have simply tried to give a picture of the villages in the hills...
...while the division among the veterans is dramatic, the generational divide is even more stark. Just ask William Jelani Cobb, an associate professor of history at Spelman College in Atlanta. Shortly after Obama's resounding victory in the South Carolina primary, he asked his African-American history class what it thought about the presidential election. Of the 26 students in his class, he said 25 supported Obama and one was undecided. "When I pointed out what the Clintons had done vis-a-vis black issues, one of my students said 'Oh, you do something nice for us and then your...