Word: townes
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...seen the Lutherans, mostly packs of high school students, choking up the narrow sidewalks of the French Quarter. The Times-Picayune reports that about 37,000 of them are in town for a convention. The locals stare at these visitors who take pictures of streetcars, wait for the signal to let them cross empty intersections, and wear conspicuously colorful “Jesus Justice Jazz” t-shirts...
First-time visitors to this hamlet on the Nam Song River can be forgiven for feeling a little lost. With shirtless young backpackers drinking beer and suntanning, it looks more like an Ibizan beach town than a Laotian village. But no, you didn't take a wrong turn at the Thai border. This is Vang Vieng - a farm town turned full-moon party, smack in the middle of a communist state. Once a resting place for opium-addled sojourners on sweet, slow tours of the East, Vang Vieng is now a haven of a different sort. It has become...
...closer to Baghdad than to Beijing. And while its history is rich - most agree at least 2,000 years old - many Uighurs in Kashgar see their culture and heritage as under attack by the Chinese government. In the latest move, authorities have started to demolish Kashgar's old town - an atmospheric, mud-brick maze of courtyard homes, winding cobblestone streets plied by donkey carts, and dozens of centuries-old mosques. By some accounts, at least 85% of Old Kashgar will be knocked down. Many expect the ancient quarter, considered one of Central Asia's best preserved sites of Islamic architecture...
...According to observers, the bulldozing of Old Kashgar has only accelerated in the riots' aftermath. The old town's warrens and alleyways are home to a tightly knit Uighur community and present, in Beijing's eyes, a potential haven for antistate activities. "Uighurs may see the area as a space of refuge," says Szadziewski. "Moving them out makes the situation much easier for China to control." As many as 220,000 residents (almost half the urban center's population) will be relocated to "modern" housing estates almost 8 km from their original homes, which have been passed down within families...
...Apple crime. Booker took a huge risk because in Newark, McCarthy had two strikes against him. First, he's white. In a majority-black city fraught with racial tension between residents and police officers, that was sure to anger some locals. Second, he's not from Newark, a provincial town accustomed to giving plum public-sector jobs to its own. So here comes this Ivy League mayor reared in the suburbs entrusting the police department to a white outsider? Political suicide, anyone? "If you're a white Irish cop from New York and have something to add to the city...