Word: straits
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...after losing a civil war to Mao's communists in 1949, relations between the two have been antagonistic at best. Beijing treats Taiwan as a runaway province and has blocked the democratic Taipei government from receiving diplomatic recognition or participating in many international forums. Both sides armed the Taiwan Strait to the teeth, turning it into one of Asia's most dangerous military flash points. Contact between them has been grossly restricted. A year ago, Taiwan residents couldn't take a scheduled flight or mail a letter directly to the mainland, and Taiwan-made goods had to be trans-shipped...
...rises over the Singapore Strait another long day for Arnold Lee begins. On a launch chugging out of Singapore harbor, the shipping agent's job that morning is to smooth the immigration process for three anxious-looking seamen, from Greece, Ukraine and Romania, who are joining the crew of a 200-m-long bulk carrier anchored an hour southeast of Singapore. As the Greek chief engineer sits in the launch, nervously fingering a string of black prayer beads, Lee clambers aboard the ship, the Anaisa Ionna, from a rope ladder dangling from its side. Forty-five minutes later the Singapore...
...haven't relaxed that. We still want them to remove the missiles. But if the two sides are to negotiate a peace agreement, the requirement on the removal of missiles obviously should not apply to the negotiations for cross-strait flights...
...Fears of a pandemic can also create enmity between once-cooperative countries over who was to blame for the contagion, which could touch off a powder keg in sensitive areas like the Taiwan Strait or Palestine. In addition, the blame for the disease may take on an ethnic or racial component. In the U.S., swine flu has already encouraged latent racism against Latinos to bubble to the surface. For organizations where keeping calm is a daily struggle, like prisons, pandemic panic can lead to riots or even murders...
...held three rounds of unprecedented talks - the first in 60 years - to agree on milestones like establishing direct flights between Taiwan and China and opening Taiwan tourism to Chinese citizens. Last weekend, they agreed to enable each other's banks to set up branches on either side of the Strait, and more than double the number of weekly direct flights that started last year. Before Ma's time, passengers traveling from Taipei to Shanghai had to go through a third city like Hong Kong, which made an 80-minute trip a 7-hour long haul. "The increase of mutual trust...