Word: tours
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...retrieve the bodies of four diplomats killed in a suicide bombing at India's embassy in the Afghan capital. The dead, who numbered 41, included a brigadier general, R.D. Mehta, who had started his post just five months ago and a foreign service officer, V.V. Rao, whose two-year tour of duty in Kabul was about to end. The bombing is likely to have regional ramifications, both for India's relations with the neighborhood and those of every other country supporting Afghan President Hamid Karzai...
After the success of The Innocents Abroad, Twain returned to the form over and over. A life of travel, which he once pronounced "fatal to prejudice," marked Twain deeply. In his twilight years, on an around-the-world lecture tour, he saw far fewer innocents abroad. The man who had crossed the U.S. 35 years earlier without seeming to notice the crushing of Native Americans now decried the depredations of colonization and the eradication of native cultures...
...Tour de France, which kicks off July 5, is a grueling test of human endurance, a three-week 2,175mile (3,500 km) race stretched over 21 stages, nine of them in the mountains. But in some ways the modern Tour is easier than races past. In the early 20th century, competitors pedaled the dirt roads of France through the night on fixed-gear bikes, evading human blockades, route-jamming cars and nails placed on the road by fans of other riders. Between stages, teams feasted on banquets and champagne; before climbs, they fortified with cigarettes...
...race was the brainchild of Henri Desgrange, a Parisian magazine editor who launched it in 1903 with 60 riders in a bid to boost circulation. It worked: Tour coverage helped Desgrange's magazine boom, and the race soon became more popular than he could have dreamed. With fans lining the roads to see riders up close, by the 1920s the Tour included more than 100 cyclists from throughout Europe. But as the competition grew fiercer and the race more commercialized, champagne and nicotine gave way to more effective--and insidious--performance boosters. In 1967, British rider Tom Simpson died midrace...
...poll, conducted at the end of the second week of Obama's economic tour, found that 44% of people preferred Obama be entrusted with the the economy to McCain's 37%, and 46% said Obama would do a better job at tackling special interest groups compared to 31% for McCain. More than two-thirds, or 68%, felt the economy was getting worse with 27% believing it is holding steady. Only 4% said the economy is improving...