Word: western
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Behavior Your essay "Overexposed" about the British attitude to sex was interesting, but I cringed at the phrase, "Britain boasts the highest rate of teen pregnancies in Western Europe" [Dec. 7]. It "boasts"? Suzanne Comberousse, PARIS...
...TIME's Alex Perry wrote in July 2009, over the past few years, young Nigerian Muslim activists, most of them educated and from the middle class, have aggressively embraced a stricter version of Islam, rejecting anything Western and Christian. In the middle of 2009, the government cracked down hard on one group nicknamed the Nigerian Taliban - officially called Boko Haram - killing its leader and scores of his followers. Boko Haram had begun life in 2001 as a peaceful group focused on the study of the Koran, according to Abdulmumin Sa'ad, a Muslim scholar and professor of sociology...
...Nigerian connection is especially troubling because, if the al-Qaeda link is true, then the huge West African country, which is sharply divided between Muslims and Christians, may indeed have become a new recruiting ground for the cause of Osama bin Laden - a situation Western officials have been concerned about for some time. Furthermore, the oil-rich yet impoverished sub-Saharan African nation sits on a religious fault line, its 150 million people split almost evenly between Muslims in the north and Christians in the south. Bin Laden is widely admired in the arid, Muslim north. It has become fashionable...
...trial had already prompted close scrutiny from several western governments, including the United States. Diplomats had not been allowed into his trial on Wednesday. On Tuesday U.S. State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley said, "As far as we can tell, this man's crime was simply signing a piece of paper that aspires to a more open and participatory form of government. That is not a crime." China's Foreign Ministry on Thursday called all criticism of Liu's trial "gross interference in China's internal affairs." (See how Beijing clamped down after the release of Charter...
...rulers of China may not commemorate Christmas and may have cynically picked the day to pass judgment on Liu to avoid Western media attention. But they may have given the people they wish to silence a new code word for anger. In the Twitterverse, Chinese language tweets have now paired Liu's fate and shengdan, the Chinese words for the birthday of Christ. From now on, Christmas will have a separate meaning for dissidents in China. It will be their day to commemorate Liu Xiaobo...