Word: weste
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...practically a rite of the season: as dependably as long sleeves come out of the closet and candy corn appears on store shelves, parts of the west go up in flames this time of year. Thousands of firefighters are battling a major blaze in southern California that has charred more than 130,000 acres, filling TV news reports with footage of hulking airplanes showering a bright red powder onto smoking forests below. (Read: "As the Greek Fires Subside, Outrage Grows...
...years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, East and West Germans are becoming more similar in their political preferences. Parties that used to be typical West German parties, such as the Greens and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), now have significant support in the former East. And Die Linke, an amalgam of the former East German ruling Communist Party and disgruntled Social Democrats, is gaining ground among left-leaning voters in the former West. Voters who were once loyal to a single party have become swing voters, with the main parties taking the hit. The ruling Christian Democratic...
...German politics is no longer dominated by the two big parties - the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats - with the kind of stable two-party coalitions that were typical of West Germany. The political game is much more open, with at least five parties vying for power and reflecting the much broader spectrum of political opinion in the population. This seemingly unstable coalition system is the new normal. "The trend for the future is a stabilization of instability," says Ulrich von Alemann, a political scientist at the University of Düsseldorf. (Read "Busting Out: German Pol Plays the Cleavage...
...None of this probably bothered Gaddafi, say Libya watchers, who believe the absences in the VIP stands were a superficial show of protest at Libya's reaction to al-Megrahi's release, rather than a sign of a rift between Libya and the West. "This is a significant country with an unusual leader, who uses his wealth to conjure up influence in places like Africa," says Richard Dalton, who was Britian's ambassador to Libya until 2002 and is now a fellow at the London think tank Chatham House. For the West, he says, Gaddafi is "much better to work...
...Perhaps for that reason, Libyan officials seem almost indifferent to the West's ire over al-Megrahi. In fact, on Aug. 31, Minister of International Cooperation Siala told reporters in Tripoli that Libya thinks now is a good time to ask Britain to investigate an assassination plot several years ago against Gaddafi - a plot which British officials deny ever existed. For its part, Britain wants Libyan officials to divulge information about the murder of British police officer Yvonne Fletcher, who was shot outside the Libyan embassy in 1984. What happens next between Britain and Libya could reveal whether al-Megrahi...