Word: topness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Like his rodent rival, Mickey Mouse, and those other critters from Disneyland, Asterix now boasts a theme park outside Paris. Over the past decade, three live-action Asterix movies have hammered Hollywood films in French cinemas; the most recent one, Asterix at the Olympic Games, was one of the top-grossing movies of 2008. And while the U.S. has remained largely immune to the Gaul's charms, his celebrity has been recognized by at least one venerable American publication: Asterix made the cover of a 1991 TIME magazine special edition on "the new France." (Read "Can Asterix Conquer Europe...
...same as at any hotel." That means ensuring that every item a guest could conceivably request, from toothpaste to ketchup to adaptors, can be readily accessed by housekeeping staff. "You have to think of this as a vertical city," Sadones explains. "Once you come up to the top, you don't go down again. Everything must be precise." (See pictures of Shanghai...
...Shanghai World Financial Center, the 101-story building that houses the hotel, launched in 1997 and promptly stalled in the Asian financial crisis. A series of restarts and halts followed. Shanghai officials also fretted over the design, which called for a large circular hole to be cut through the top of the building to relieve the force of strong winds. The feature would too much resemble the rising sun of the Japanese flag, they argued. Architect David Malott concocted a trapezoidal cutout instead, giving the building a striking resemblance to a bottle opener. But "it's dramatic...
...many, the behind-the-scenes negotiations run counter to the Lisbon Treaty, which is meant to make the E.U. a more efficient, transparent and democratic system. Former Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, one of the few declared candidates for the presidency, said last week that the machinations over the top jobs could ultimately damage the new leaders' authority. "The E.U. should stop working like the former Soviet Union ... in darkness and behind closed doors," she said...
...able to win some acknowledgments from the U.S. Obama said the U.S. considers Tibet to be part of the People's Republic of China. While that is long-standing American policy, scholars could recall no point when a U.S. President has stated it publicly. Territorial questions like Tibet remain top priorities for China, and Obama's mention of that issue was a key win for Beijing. It's a sign that while China doesn't know how it wants to use its newfound clout on the global stage, it is learning how to get what it wants from...