Word: group
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...They swung out with improvised weapons. Only one had a police baton, another wielded a long metal file he had presumably taken from a toolshed. The most impassioned of the group held a sharpened stick, which he brandished high in the air while he careened about menacingly, seemingly possessed. Later I saw one man brandishing a construction worker's shovel, still caked in dirt...
...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 at the University...
...vanished from offices, restaurants, cafés and train stations as the French dutifully took their glowing butts outside - the only place where smoking was still permitted. But this being France, a backlash was almost certainly inevitable. According to a report released on Dec. 17 by an anti-smoking group, the initial obeisance of French smokers has now given way to people increasingly flaunting the law by lighting up indoors...
...that the transgressors are still a relatively rare exception to the rule. If smokers become bolder about lighting up indoors, however, non-smokers may begin demanding greater action from authorities. Even Parola acknowledges that second-hand smoke levels have vastly improved since the ban went into effect, saying his group's current campaign is only aimed at improving enforcement enough to prevent a gradual return to 2006 habits...
Human rights groups say the length of Liu's sentence is the longest they've seen for a subversion charge, a harsh punishment meant to warn other activists. "The explicit message being sent is: we are brooking no challenge, no further dissent of this nature and if you continue, this is the consequence. It's the old 'kill the chicken to scare the monkeys' routine," says Joshua Rosenzweig, a Hong Kong-based official with the Dui Hua Foundation, a human-rights group. "The implicit message or unintended message is the government is very, very afraid of allowing any sort...