Word: summits
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...present in such a gesture can be manipulated. This summer has shown a wealth of seemingly diplomatic symbols that have invited much criticism. Silvio Berlusconi—the Italian prime minister—seems to have gambled with the choice of L’Aquila for the July G8 summit in order to draw attention away from recent accusations that his social life resembles that of a sordid playboy’s. Since people use symbols to convey something beyond the obvious, Berlusconi’s political symbolism at the G8 summit might be cynically viewed as having a particularly...
...Back in Washington, D.C., President Barack Obama learned the enduring value of a well-intentioned gesture with another kind of summit. He felt that he needed to retreat from the inflammatory words that he uttered in judgment of the Cambridge police department after Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested there, sparking a national debate about race in America. Though the discourse about the arrest, its aftermath, and the realities of race problems in the country spread far and wide, Obama thought that a simple gesture might soothe the ire of the affair—an invitation to relax over...
Baitullah himself rose to the top of the Pakistani Taliban after a long internecine battle with other commanders, like Abdullah Mehsud, a onetime detainee at Guanténamo Bay. Once he had reached the summit, Baitullah was able to keep fractious tribal commanders in line by sheer force of will. It helped that, after a 2005 truce with Pakistani authorities, he had the time and freedom to consolidate his leadership. Many counterterrorism analysts believe he also had the covert help of Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI. It helped, too, that the CIA's drone campaign was aimed primarily...
...held it for more than a generation. The contrast between the two leaders was never greater than on Tsvangirai's recent foreign tour, during which he was feted by President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. At an African Union summit in Libya, meanwhile, Mugabe stormed out of a meeting with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson, calling him an "idiot" for trying to "dictate...
Among some hikers in the San Francisco Bay Area, the quad-straining trail to the summit of 4,344-ft. Mount St. Helena near Calistoga, Calif., is known as "the stairway to heaven" for its panoramic views of the Napa and Sonoma valleys. These views, however, soon may be off-limits to visitors - the latest victim of the Golden State's staggering budget crisis. The trail sits within Robert Louis Stevenson State Park, one of up to 100 state parks in California that might be closed by Labor Day to help eliminate a budget gap of $26 billion. While...