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| 1 |
ID:
124716
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2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The article provides various historical anecdotes regarding efforts to engineer weather and climate. It includes the 1841 theories of American meteorologist James Pollard Espy to promote rain by igniting massive fires, the 1896 findings by Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius that found a direct correlation between a rise in carbon dioxide levels and rising temperatures across the globe, and the 1967-1972 Operation Popeye which used cloud seeding as a U.S. military tactic during the Vietnam War and its associated military operations in Cambodia and Laos.
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| 2 |
ID:
124720
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2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
American spent much of this summer arguing over migration reform, and south Africans spent much of it contemplating Nelson Mandela's legacy. But the link between the two went unnoticed one of Mandela's biggest legacies was to show that immigration reform on a scale hugely more ambitious than any thing proposed in the hall of the US Congress can benefit everyone, in real economic terms.
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| 3 |
ID:
124708
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2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
THE TAIWANESE ISLANDS of Matsu do not seem like an ideal spot for one of the world's biggest casinos. Although they are ringed by rocky beaches and azure water, only about 10,000 people live on the 19 tightly clustered flyspecks, some 126 miles away from the main island Taiwan. An Associated Press reporter who visited in 2012 described Matsu's few shops as "a complex of decaying concrete structures that are most notable for their low-wattage gracelessness." Besides a small tourism industry, the islands' chief draw is sorghum-based liquor that, to the uninitiated, smells like embalming fluid.
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| 4 |
ID:
124711
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The holy month of Muharram is a dangerous time in Pakistan. It marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar but is also a period of mourning for Shiite Muslims. Each year, in the overflowing metropolis of Karachi, they take to the streets in processions by the thousands to observe Ashura, the anniversary of the martyrdom of Hussein ibn Ali, the Prophet Mohammed's grandson, and one of the holiest days of the year for Shiite Muslims. It is often a bloody affair, and not just because of the ritual self-flagellation in which many of the devout partake. Over the past four years, with astonishing punctuality, Shiite processions and mosques have been brutally attacked by Sunni supremacist militants bent on starting a sectarian war.
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| 5 |
ID:
124710
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
It's a June night in Kinshasa, and rapper JB Mpiana's weekly VIP bash is just starting to heat up. Toned groupies splash like mermaids in a sunken pool. Middle-aged businessmen perch on the ledge above to watch. A minute before midnight, JB runs onstage among a huge posse of gyrating dancers in sunglasses. He rips into some of his biggest hits; a bombastic performer, he glides across the stage with a beefy grace, dressed in a hunter-orange jumpsuit and matching cap.
Most songs deal with the usual material, girls and gangbangers, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Lingala language. But when JB starts to chant the lyrics of his biggest hit of the night, the real purpose of this party -- festooned with yellow-and-blue banners advertising Primus, the beer that everyone would be drinking anyway, even at this lush downtown wine bar -- becomes obvious.
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| 6 |
ID:
124703
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2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Mexico is rising. You can see it in the country's swelling exports, the net-zero migration to the United States, the excitement of international bond investors, a recent credit upgrade from Standard & Poor's, a newly confident middle class, and a per capita GDP that has doubled since 2000. Not to mention a young, dynamic, handsome new president. In case you missed all these signs, though, you can also see Mexico's surge forward in a Scotch whisky ad.
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| 7 |
ID:
124715
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
ONE DAY during the Civil War, a group of men arrived at the White House demanding to see Abraham Lincoln. They were determined, they told the U.S. president, to get their man appointed as a diplomat in the Sandwich Islands--modern-day Hawaii. After making their case on merit, one of the men added earnestly that their nominee was in poor health and that the balmy island weather would do him good. Lincoln wasn't buying it. "Gentlemen," he said before sending them on their way, "I am sorry to say that there are eight other applicants for that place, and they are all sicker than your man."
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| 8 |
ID:
124722
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
AS THE WORLD'S power brokers--well, ministers and central bankers from 188 countries--gather in October for the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund, they will again be confronted by evidence that the IMF is still in need of proper reform. This time, the evidence comes not only in the form of continued global economic malaise and financial instability, but the IMF'S brutally honest self-evaluation of its role in the insufficient Greek bailout (and, by implication, its involvement in other European countries). On the heels of this disappointing performance, one thing is clear: The IMF is still stuck in the last century
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| 9 |
ID:
124721
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
At the sprawling Bush market deep within Afghanistan's capital, the American war is for sale. The maze of some 500 interconnected stores, named for the US president who invaded in 2001, is a chaotic emporium brimming with goods carted in by truck to supply NATO troops. For more than one decade, thousand of vehicles have crossed the border with Pakistan each month, barring food and supplies that are in turn pilfered, repurposed with price tags and put on display under the baking sun: Pop-Tars, Maxwell house coffee canisters and squeeze bottles of maple syrups alongside military fatigues, body armor night vision goggles GPS devices and even some automatic rifles.
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| 10 |
ID:
124705
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
WITH THIS SUMMER'S news from the United Nations that Mexico has surpassed the United States in adult obesity levels--one-third of Mexican adults are now considered extremely overweight--U.S. foreign policy has come into sharper, or perhaps softer, focus. Despite first lady Michelle Obama's continued emphasis on good diet and exercise, the United States seems secretly intent on fattening everyone else on the planet. Apparently, America has adopted the old piece of ursine humor as grand strategy: "You don't have to run faster than the bear to get away. You just have to run faster than the guy next to you."
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| 11 |
ID:
124712
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
I had two New Year's resolutions in 2011: to read Leo Tolstoy'sAnna Karenina and Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Annawas completed by Jan. 25 -- just when our lives turned into a 24-hour TV marathon tuned to Cairo's Tahrir Square as the world watched a dictator fall in 18 short days. We Syrians knew our country was not Egypt or Tunisia, but when even Libya ignited on Feb. 15, we collectively held our breath with hope. The weeks passed, the uprisings around the Arab world grew larger and more determined, and the seven volumes of Proust slowly collected dust on my nightstand
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| 12 |
ID:
124707
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
From Pepsi in Prague to Hershey bars in Hong Kong, American snack-makers enjoy a de facto oligopoly on global junk-food consumption. But what do snackers in U.S.-sanctioned countries eat when they get peckish? To find out, I embarked on a global scavenger hunt of sorts, collecting candy, chips, and soda that you won't find in American stores -- sometimes straight from the source (a recent reporting trip to Cuba) and sometimes by way of friends, acquaintances, and strangers around the globe. I enlisted New York Times food writer and bestselling author Mark Bittman to sample my collection of "enemy" snacks, which ranged from the mildly exotic to the blatantly imitative. Here are Bittman's tasting notes -- and a few words of warning.
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| 13 |
ID:
124717
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Analysts often borrow from the vocabulary of disease to describe financial crises, using word such as "pandemic" and "contagion" to discussed how economic disturbance spread. But recent research suggests a more literal connection between the two : poor countries, actual disease can infect the financial system.
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