Word: swamp
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Singapore is in most respects a roaring success story, an economic powerhouse built in just 50 years on what was once a swamp. It is also a shining example of a country that successfully melds disparate population groups - Chinese, Malays, Indians and Europeans - in a region where ethnic and political strife are commonplace. But as the tiny number who seek to form or join opposition groups know, speaking out in Singapore can invite a lawsuit, bankruptcy or even prison. From time to time the government tentatively tries to open up. "Speakers' Corner" was one such attempt. Modeled on its London...
...crystal-clear waters from the Maldives. But a jungle landscape so verdant it smacks of Borneo? Certainly, if you happen to be on Villingili island, home to half of the country's local flora in the form of lush primary forest, three freshwater lagoons and a sprawling mangrove swamp. It's there, in the Maldives' far-flung south, that you'll find the new Shangri-La Villingili Resort and Spa, www.shangri-la.com - the only luxury property in the area and the fruit of five years' laborious construction owing to its remote location...
...climatologists like to call our current climatic phase the Long Summer. The history of Earth's climate has rarely been smooth. From the moment life began on the planet billions of years ago, the climate has swung drastically and often abruptly from one state to another - from tropical swamp to frozen ice age. Over the past 10,000 years, however, the climate has remained remarkably stable by historical standards: not too warm and not too cold, or Goldilocks weather. That stability has allowed Homo sapiens, numbering perhaps just a few million at the dawn of the Holocene, to thrive; farming...
...hopeful gesture. But the economy crashed. He's had a very difficult first couple of months in office. He's in real trouble with his health-care policy, all of which points to the fact that there are very, very large forces at work here that swamp individual charisma and great political skill. Since the mid-1970s, American confidence in government plummeted fast, stayed down and has not been reversed...
...International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts that in the three years from 2008 to 2010, China will, astonishingly, account for almost three-quarters of the world's economic growth. Not surprisingly, China has now become the focus of a world that is looking for a way out of the swamp. As Shanghai-based economist Andy Xie puts it, "Everyone wants to know the same thing: Can China save the world...