Word: took
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...West might regard him as backward, but Than Shwe, 76, sees himself as a bold reformer who took a bankrupt nation and threw it open to foreign investment, who built not just roads and bridges but a grand new capital called Naypyidaw - "Abode of Kings." The reality is a little different. Foreign trade has enriched the junta; the Yadana natural-gas project alone has earned the regime $4.83 billion since 2000, according to the Washington-based nonprofit EarthRights International in a recent report. But most Burmese still live in wretched poverty. The new capital is an expensive boondoggle...
...junta has shrewdly adapted to 20 years of breakneck growth in Asia, first drawing investment from Southeast Asian neighbors - until a new regional giant emerged. "In 1988, nobody in the Burmese military knew how quickly China would grow economically," says Seekins. "But as this was happening [the regime] took advantage of that situation to promote close ties to China." Burma joined ASEAN in 1997, gaining further allies against Western criticism and more trade opportunities (Thailand gets most of its natural gas from Burma), and is improving ties with India. Even at Naypyidaw, once a symbol of seclusion, the junta plans...
...Hermès'. But from 2004 to early 2008, the company opened 94 new stores and dozens of outlet shops. By the end of 2007, same-store sales were dipping for the first time in years. Says the author: "Convenience acts like antimatter to aura and identity." Likewise, Motorola took its sleek, fashionable $400 Razr cell phone and flooded the market with it at a lower price. "It destroyed the Razr brand," says the author. "Consumers who once considered the Razr the high-fidelity phone now saw it as the cheap phone you get when signing a wireless contract." One consequence...
...separate fraudulent tallies from ballots. In some provinces, many more votes were counted than were cast. E.U. election monitors characterize 1.5 million votes as suspect, which would include up to one-third of the votes cast for incumbent President Hamid Karzai. Once fraud occurs on the scale of what took place in Afghanistan, it is impossible to untangle...
...conveying the vicious indifference with which their lives are shattered, Byatt's penetrating, unsentimental style hits its mark. None of Olive's fairy tales could have foretold one son's ending: "He was dead by the time he was found by the stretcher-bearers, so they took his identity-tag, and looked in his bloody pockets for letters or photos - there was a publicity photograph of Olive, looking wise and gentle. Then they left...