Word: bit
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...Fukuda's precarious situation makes it especially important that Hu's visit goes smoothly. Since hitting a low point in 2005, when thousands of Chinese staged anti-Japanese protests in major Chinese cities, typically frosty political relations between the two countries have been warming up a bit - and because of China's growing economic power, it's crucial to Tokyo that this trend continues. (China last year surpassed the U.S. as Japan's largest export destination.) Like Abe, Fukuda has avoided angering Beijing by refraining from official visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japanese war dead, including 14 convicted...
...With such problems in the public system, it's little wonder that private operators have boomed. Some 80% of all spending on health care in India is now private, some of it by large companies insuring their staff, some by nongovernmental groups running health programs, and a bit by rich Indians using the best private facilities. But the overwhelming majority of the spending is by poor citizens. Money is so tight that many rural Indians skip doctors and rely on advice from local pharmacists, who too often prescribe cough syrup or tablets that do nothing to help. Because only...
Would anyone want to pick a fight with Ickes, the famously ill-tempered bad boy of the Democratic Party who once bit a rival political operative on the leg? Who once got so mad at having to remove his shoes at an airport security line that he marched off to his plane, yelling "Keep them!" over his shoulder, and flew home in his socks? Who sometimes answers reporters' phone calls with a curt "I'm sorry, Mr. Ickes isn't here now," and then simply hangs...
...police and army are drawn largely from the Badr Organization, the chief rival of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. That's why it was no surprise, said Lieutenant Ryan Lawson, who is based in Hilla, that the Shi'ite town's Badr-dominated forces were "chomping at the bit to go after [the Mahdi Army]" in recent fighting. In areas where al-Sadr's militia dominates, many soldiers simply deserted, either out of loyalty to the cleric or out of fear. "Most of the officers are scared that if they attack the militias and the Mahdi Army today, they...
...told us - that Franks issued the orders to discard the original twelve-to-eighteen-month occupation deployment, that the forces were drawing down, that we were walking away from the mission, and that everybody knew about it. And let me tell you, the Secretary did not like that one bit. After we went in to brief him, he just shut us down. 'This is not going anywhere,' he said. 'Oh, and by the way, leave all the copies right here and don't talk to anybody about...