Word: states
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Buildings may topple and lives may be lost if the Big One shakes the wrong part of California but another catastrophic consequence of an enormous earthquake in the San Francisco area may involve water. Two thirds of the state's drinking water supply flows through the gigantic Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta region east of San Francisco Bay - and the levees that help direct the massive amounts of water south to farmlands and cities are so antiquated that many may simply collapse with a major temblor. The resulting flooding could also put California's huge farm belt, hundreds of thousands...
Everyone has known of that doomsday scenario for years - a time in which the needs of farmers, the ambitions of environmentalists and the thirst of cities clashed. The big news this week is that California finally passed legislation to overhaul the state's aging water system. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger called it "an historic agreement" and promised to sign into law. "Water is the lifeblood of everything we do in California," Schwarzenegger said. "Without clean reliable water, we cannot build, we cannot farm, we cannot grow, we cannot prosper." (See a story about the water crisis in the American west...
...upon returning from his African safari. But it wasn't until 1919, when Grover Whalen was made New York City's official greeter, that ticker-tape parades took off: from 1919 to 1953 he reportedly threw 86 of them, many at the urging of the State Department. The luminaries he feted in his early years included Albert Einstein in 1921 - the only scientist ever honored with a ticker-tape parade - as well as the U.S. Olympic team in 1924 and Charles Lindbergh in 1927. By then, of course, the tradition had spread: thousands of Chicagoans showered boxer Gene Tunney with...
...become a "vulgar newspaper [that has] lost its value as a newspaper of a civilized country." Just when tensions looked set to dissipate, Hun Sen announced on Nov. 4 that he was appointing a certain Thai as his economic advisor. Thaksin's conviction by a Thai court, opined Cambodian state T.V., was "politically motivated." The former Premier responded by announcing that he would be delighted to accept the position in order to keep "my brain sharp" - although he cautioned that the honorary position wouldn't be as fun as "working to help Thai people out of poverty...
...when President Obama announced the need for a complete halt to settlements, including natural growth," Abbas said. "We were surprised by his support for the Israeli position." (The U.S. has backed Israel's argument that negotiations should resume despite the disagreement over the settlements. Last weekend U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton drew howls of protest across the region when she praised as "unprecedented" Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's offer to only slow settlement activity, but not in Jerusalem...