Word: townships
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Incidents like this happen because local officials, especially at the county and township levels, have interests apart from the work of governing. Since the taxation reforms of 1993, China's central government has taken the majority of tax revenue for itself and has left many local institutions without sufficient resources. In small, poor places, cadres want better working conditions, better incomes and better education. Since they don't get money from Beijing, they collect it from the farmers, many of whom are too poor to pay fees, taxes and other levies. This burden has been a classic cause of rural...
...More recently, village officials have found new ways to line their pockets. China's booming real estate market makes rural land a valuable asset. Local governments increasingly depend on land sales as their main source of revenue. But in order to sell village property, they need to control the townships. This means making sure that their allies are elected as village chiefs. And, as was the case in Taishi, it can also mean attempts to rig local elections. In China's countryside, new alliances of ?lites have emerged among township officials, companies, high-ranking cadres, village leaders and the hired...
...Thirty-six hours after the disaster, the authorities in Uri say they have counted 400 dead and 3,000 injured in their township alone. They acknowledge that that is a fraction of the likely final toll. Uri Deputy Commissioner Aiyaz Kakroo says 113,000 people live in 95 villages around Uri and 75 of those have suffered ?90% damage,? by which he means houses damaged beyond being inhabitable, or totally destroyed. ?We have fifteen to twenty thousand damaged homes,? he says. ?We need 50,000 blankets and 15,000 tents. So far we have two to three thousand blankets...
Suffering from migraines and sick of suburban life, real estate agent Dawn Deel fled the outskirts of Detroit three years ago to build a new life in Golden Township, Oceana County, on Lake Michigan's eastern shore. Deel's new house, in an area known for the beauty of its sand-duned beaches and orchard-clad hills, overlooks a fallow field where cherry trees once grew. She hopes this bucolic vista will lure buyers to the adjacent plots she owns. Best of all, her migraines are gone. "Since I've been up here," she says, "my whole physiology has changed...
...Finally, the squads move out. One includes firefighters Mark Bond, Joey Lykins and Barry Mesley, a "hazmat" specialist from the Miami Township emergency rescue service who will operate the "AC hot stick," a crucial device which beeps a certain way if a power line is live. Within a few blocks they encounter the first set of fallen trees that will have to be moved. Bond hauls out a plus-sized Stihl chainsaw while his partners ready the winch and help move the logs...