Word: problem
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...safety net and boosting rural incomes. But the global economic crisis may force them to move more quickly on these fronts. China's unemployment rate could reach 14% before the crisis is over, according to one recent study, even with all the infrastructure spending Beijing is throwing at the problem. Wen himself said Thursday that if the economy doesn't grow 8% this year (and only the most optimistic economists believe it will), the country risks politically destabilizing social unrest...
...National Security Agency (NSA), which collects the vast bulk of chatter for this country, has no shortage of sophisticated equipment and no legal obstacles when it listens to chatter abroad. What it does have a problem with is making sense of the sea of chatter it sucks out of the air and the world's fiber-optic cables. The risk of misinterpretation or missing a vital piece of information is enormous. (See the top 10 Secret Service code names...
...There's also the problem that almost anyone who reads the news today knows that any phone conversation can be monitored, by the U.S. or another competent intelligence service. An operative recently back from Iraq tells me that Kurdish political leaders systematically script telephone conversations among themselves in order to mislead the Americans, Iranians and Turks, who the Kurds know are listening to their phone calls. Since transcripts of these calls carry the weight of scripture in Washington, we risk being led into another intelligence failure in Iraq. For that matter, how do we know that al-Qaeda in Pakistan...
...problem comes when habitually snail-paced pedestrians find themselves aloft fast-moving bicycles, especially ones for whose upkeep they don't feel responsible. Recently released figures indicate that around 11,600 of the bicycles have been trashed, slashed, battered, brutalized and even drowned in the Seine since the program began; 7,800 others have been stolen. Just as bad, some cyclists have even begun broadcasting Internet videos of themselves engaged in "Vélib free rides" or "extreme Vélib'," in which wannabe urban daredevils put the solid but graceless bikes through punishing stunts usually reserved...
...five permanent members - Russia, China and the U.S. - have not signed on to the statute.) Plus, the ICC has thus far only pursued Africans, in the Central African Republic and Congo as well as Sudan and Uganda. "That," said African Union chairman Jean Ping in February, "is a problem." Asking why no cases had emerged from conflicts in Gaza, the Caucasus, Colombia or Iraq, Ping said, "We don't want this double standard." (See pictures of Sudan's slow-motion tragedy...