Word: states
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Mexican insurrections often do coincide with important dates. Most recently, Zapatista guerrillas in the poor southern state of Chiapas started a revolt on Jan. 1, 1994, the day the North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect. A big fear now is that Mexico's drug cartels, responsible for almost 15,000 killings in the past decade, are lending their resources and firepower to emerging guerrilla groups. If so, their plan may be to sow bicentennial terror and turn Mexicans against President Felipe Calderón's drug-war offensive. This past fall authorities say they seized an arsenal of large...
Either way, the drug cartels have already shown they're willing to use high-profile national celebrations as a stage for narco-terror. Last year, during Independence Day festivities in drug-infested Michoacan state, narcos killed seven people with fragmentation-grenade blasts. Mexicans were rattled again in September when bombs went off at three Mexico City banks and another at a car dealership. No one was injured, but to many chilangos, or capital residents, the explosions seemed a warning of things to come...
...place" for residents of this "serene and peaceful" nation. "These kids just want to get off the rock," says Bigelow. "And I don't like the recruiters coming in and harvesting the best kids just because they don't know how to get from here to San Francisco State University or even San Francisco Community College...
...part of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), an island nation in the western Pacific Ocean that was formerly part of a U.N. trust territory administered by the U.S. after World War II. Under an agreement signed in 1986, the islands were granted independence but citizens were given the right to live and work in the U.S. and serve in its military. Initially, few enlisted. But these days, U.S. military recruiters visit local high schools annually and students sign up in droves. For FSM youths, military service means money, adventure and opportunity, a way off tiny islands with few jobs...
...prime minister was even quick to capitalize on the coincidence of Pope Benedict XVI's being knocked down in a security breach at the Christmas Eve mass. "We must truly fight back against this factory of lies, extremism and hate," he said on the RAI state television's top newscast after a woman pulled down the pontiff as he entered St. Peter's Basilica...