Word: systemic
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Hong Kongers, myself included, love to affect a certain expertise when it comes to feng shui. Because I am otherwise a materialist (as in believing only in physical matter, not as in bling), it has always been self-contradictory of me to discourse on the Chinese system of geomancy and the notion that the arrangement of landscape and objects affects well-being. At dinner parties, I can denounce mysticism - or yogic flying or reincarnation - as shrilly as any Red Guard, and declare that Christians ought to be deprived of the vote. But I'm also capable, at the evening...
...Early efforts to identify and measure dioxin levels at Agent Orange hot spots were undertaken by the U.S.-based Ford Foundation in the 1990s. Later, with technical assistance from the EPA, Ford "capped" the most contaminated section of what is now the Da Nang International Airport, installing a filtration system to stop dioxins from flowing into the city's water supply and building a wall to keep people from entering the area. At another abandoned U.S. air base in the Aluoi Valley, a Vietnamese botanist raised $25,000 in donations to plant cactus-like bushes and thorn trees around contaminated...
...agreements. Brazilian lawyers said Sean Goldman's stepfather, João Lins e Silva, has diligently followed due process in his attempt to retain custody of his late wife's son. (She died in childbirth earlier this year.) But there is still a sense that the already slow legal system is being swayed, in part, by money and influence. Sean's stepfather's family, the Lins e Silvas, is well known in Brazilian legal circles and they have so far used the system skillfully to retain custody of the child. (Can Rio's crime problem be solved before the Olympics...
...Brazilian family are respected lawyers and they understand the situation and they know what steps they can legitimately take within the system here," said a U.S. official familiar with the case. "But what we need to make clear is that the Government of Brazil is in agreement for his return [to his biological father]. We need to work through the legal system so the Brazilian government can enforce the return." Indeed, David Goldman had flown to Rio de Janeiro to pick up his son after a federal court in Brazil ruled he had legal custody of the boy, only...
...before entering the U.S., Brasilia makes Americans pay for a "reciprocal" permit to get into Brazil; after the U.S. started thumb-printing foreigners in immigration lines after 9/11, Brazil obliged Americans to do the same. Those are understandable counterjabs. But while no one is suggesting that the Brazilian justice system has been keeping Sean from his father as payback for Elián, Americans can't forget how loudly - and rightly - Brazil and the rest of Latin America decried America's violation of international law in the Cuban case. (See how Elián González was reunited with...