Word: summer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...those blue-sky, Sydney summer afternoons early last year when I first realized something had gone awry with the Australian flag. The date was Jan. 26, 2008 - Australia Day. I'd just returned to Sydney as a freelance journalist after some years in New York City and was having lunch at a pub in the beachfront suburb of Newport when an uneasy, skin-prickling moment dawned. Around me were hundreds of young white men and women, many of them drunk, chanting the national war cry - "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi oi oi!" Almost all were sporting the Australian flag...
...that summer has unofficially kicked off, it's time to get to the shore. We've scoped out seaside destinations from California to the Caribbean where you can catch cooling ocean breezes and - since peak summer-travel season is still a few weeks away - some good shoulder-season deals...
Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of summer, conjuring images of picnics, barbecues or just a lazy day off. But originally the holiday was charged with deeper meaning - and with controversy...
Iraq's economic woes stem mainly from the huge drop in the price of oil, which accounts for 90% of the country's revenues. Last summer the price of oil soared to nearly $150 a barrel. Now the price is roughly a third of that, leaving Iraq struggling to fend off a financial collapse within its government. Iraq has an estimated $30 billion in surplus funds generated from oil sales in years past, but that money is dwindling. Iraq expects to run a deficit this year of roughly $20 billion, which could be covered by the surplus funds...
Other sources of revenue have gone dry or are about to. Foreign investors have been slow to spend in Iraq because of the violence and huge uncertainty surrounding the security situation following the U.S. drawdown going forward this summer. U.S. reconstruction funds are dwindling as American troops move to go. And Iraq at present cannot sell government bonds on the international market without risking them becoming entangled in a myriad of reparations lawsuits related to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait...