Word: importance
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...invested about $350 million in an assembly plant, and is producing about 320 cars per day. Peugeot is not far behind. Dietmar Korzekwa, VW's group representative for Russia, says the automaker is continuing with its current growth plans. In part, it's betting that if the Kremlin raises import taxes on autos, as it has suggested it might, it will become more advantageous to manufacture in Russia...
...priority industry for the Chinese government, and many carmakers are already heavily backed by the state, which could aid to keep local champions afloat through the downturn. This week Chery, one of the country's most successful domestic automakers, received a $1.5 billion loan from China's Export Import Bank. Jin Yibo, Chery's spokesman, says that the loan isn't government aid or any sort of bailout, but a "business deal" between Chery and the bank. However the money is characterized, it will be a boost to Chery's operations. Jin says the funds will be used for export...
Proponents laud Kramer's system for infusing humdrum regular-season matchups with drama and import. But critics say the BCS can discriminate against worthy underdogs and elevate the wrong teams to its ultimate showdown. Outrage over its capricious rankings spurred Senate hearings in 2003 and a congressional inquiry in 2005. A 2007 Gallup poll found that only 15% of fans would balk at scrapping the present format for a tidy year-end tournament. This year, that number is probably even lower in the Lone Star State...
...photography emerged in the mid-19th century, photographing naked women became one of the first orders of business. The French ruled the early days of pornography publishing, distributing programs for Parisian cabarets adorned with topless dancers as early as the 1870s. While some Americans attempted to import racy material from Europe, the industry was blunted in the U.S. by the Comstock Act, an 1873 federal statute that restricted the transport of obscene literature through the mail. (Anthony Comstock, the head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, was perhaps the anti-Hefner, a Puritanical zealot...
...import of the deal, known as the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), is inarguable: after nearly six years, it would mark the beginning of the end of the U.S. occupation. Under SOFA's terms, the U.S. would withdraw nearly all 150,000 of its troops by New Year's Day 2012, leaving Iraq's security in the hands of its own army...