Word: southernization
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...While bird lovers admire grackles for their iridescent feathers and canny ability to mimic human voices, for others they're a nuisance - dirty, noisy and a plague that has prompted cities and institutions across the country to declare war on the black clouds that roost in trees throughout the southern U.S. So when the black birds turned up dead, suspicions about a possible culprit exposed divisions that run deep across the country between the pro- and anti-grackle camps...
...Common grackles, as they are known, are just that - common, especially in the fall and winter when southern birds move into the urban areas and northern birds fly south in great flocks of thousands. Google "grackle" and you will find birding sites that describe them as "opportunistic foragers" and "boisterous and abundant." For every rhapsodic bird lover, there is someone like director Michael Berry, whose successful short film Day of the Grackle, depicts one man's war with a grackle from hell...
...Hidden in mountainous Mindanao in the southern Philippines, Giegie's platoon is fighting a rebellion older than most of its members. Since 1969, the N.P.A., the armed wing of the outlawed Communist Party of the Philippines, has waged what it calls a "protracted people's war" in which a total of some 40,000 guerrillas, soldiers and civilians have so far died. Her platoon's armory is motley-it includes rifles, grenade launchers and an aging mortar, mostly captured from soldiers or police; and its members are young, idealistic and, in many cases, already scarred by battle-eight members...
Still recoiling from the victory of the ultranationalist Radical Party in last week's parliamentary poll, Serbia is bracing for a new political crisis that could amplify nationalist sentiment. The U.N. is expected shortly to unveil proposals for the future of Serbia's independence-seeking southern province of Kosovo, seen by most Serbs as the cradle of their civilization. Populated mostly by ethnic Albanians, Kosovo was placed under U.N. protectorate status in 1999 after NATO military strikes forced Serbian forces to withdraw, although it remains formally part of Serbia. For most of last year, Serbian and Kosovar envoys negotiated...
...Lebanon is still recovering from the ravages of last summer's 34-day war between Hizballah and Israel, which left over 1,000 Lebanese civilians dead and caused damage estimated at almost $4 billion. Hizballah's once heavily guarded and sealed-off headquarters in Beirut's southern suburbs was completely destroyed by multiple Israeli air strikes, and with its leaders still under the threat of assassination by Israel, security around them is tight. To reach Qassem, this reporter was driven by Hizballah security personnel into an unlit basement of a building then bundled into a minibus with blacked-out windows...