Word: state
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...surprisingly, was number one. Slovakia's angst began when Czechoslovakia split up in 1993 and Vladimir Meciar became Prime Minister of the new Slovak nation, ushering in four years of autocratic and isolationist rule. The country was considered such a backwater during those days that then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once famously referred to it as "the black hole in the heart of Europe." Since then, however, Slovakia has caught up with and even surpassed its Eastern European rivals, joining NATO and the European Union in 2004 and adopting the euro in 2009. (Czechs, meanwhile, are still using...
...year. But as the government crawls out from one of the worst natural disasters of modern times, the challenge of holding those contests looks daunting at best, especially since Haiti is the western hemisphere's poorest country. But Haitian President René Préval and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week urged that legislative elections, which were supposed to have taken place in February and March, and the presidential balloting, which has yet to be scheduled, be held. Otherwise, they warn, the nation, which has a long, violent history of political turmoil and dictatorships, risks undermining...
...elections aren't or can't be held this year, parliamentarians are considering other options to fill the governmental vacuum. One, says Senator Jeanty Jean Williams of the southern Nippes department, is that the current legislature create a "regional state council," with 30 members chosen from designated civic groups around the country. That body's job in turn would be to help put together a "national state council" to act as a sort of interim parliament until formal legislative elections can take place, perhaps next year. "That is the most popular alternative," says Williams, "because of its [regional] inclusiveness...
...country, as they were essentially doing even before the earthquake. That model has "gone nowhere," says Robert Maguire, a Haiti expert affiliated with Trinity Washington University and the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington. Despite the post-quake chaos, "it's time for [Haiti] to become a state that serves its people and moves [away] from the NGO. Elections are important because they are an investment in Haiti's long-term future...
...embezzling about $4 million from Guatemala's Defense Ministry. He allegedly laundered the money through accounts in Guatemala and through U.S. and European banks. It was a financial shell game that involved overdrafts so massive, say authorities, that two Guatemalan banks are now insolvent and the country's only state-run mortgage bank is teetering on collapse. (See a profile of U.S. prosecutor Preet Bharara...