Word: tinderbox
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...hormones are especially active in the brain's emotional center - the limbic system. This creates a "tinderbox of emotions," says Dr. Ronald Dahl, a psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh. Not only do feelings reach a flash point more easily, but adolescents tend to seek out situations where they can allow their emotions and passions to run wild. "Adolescents are actively looking for experiences to create intense feelings," says Dahl. "It's a very important hint that there is some particular hormone-brain relationship contributing to the appetite for thrills, strong sensations and excitement." This thrill seeking may have evolved...
...appear unable to agree on what role American forces will play in targeting militants on Pakistani soil. Thursday's exchange - Pakistani officials said the helicopters had returned fire, which U.S. officials denied - between U.S. forces and Washington's key ally in its war on terror highlights the tinderbox that western Pakistan has become since 9/11. U.S. forces find themselves restrained by political and diplomatic concerns from pursuing enemy targets inside Pakistan, while the loyalties of Pakistan's security forces are clearly divided. Those forces - especially the Frontier Corps that guards the border - can be crudely characterized as being pro-Taliban...
...construction workers, mortgage bankers, real estate agents and others whose livelihoods depended on importing a thousand more newcomers the next day. And the elaborate water-management scheme that made southern Florida habitable has been stretched beyond capacity, yo-yoing between brutal droughts and floods, converting the Everglades into a tinderbox and a sewer, ravaging the beaches, bays, lakes and reefs that made the region so alluring in the first place. "The dream is fading," says University of South Florida historian Gary Mormino. "People think Florida is too crowded, too spoiled, too expensive, too crazy, too many immigrants - name your malady...
...country - an acrimonious ethnic divide. But rogue militias are still around, and the police are still drawn mainly from just the west side. Moreover, unemployment is rising ever higher, the judiciary remains weak, and thousands of refugees who fled past fighting continue to languish in makeshift camps nationwide - a tinderbox waiting to explode...
...authorities prefer to blame extreme weather conditions, including strong winds and back-to-back heatwaves that have turned Greece, and much of the Balkans, into a tinderbox. Still, rumors abound that some of the blazes may have been caused by arsonists hired by greedy developers to torch precious patches of greenery on which they want to build. In the last 20 years, large tracts of land have been cleared around Athens by fires, and eight of them have been cleared for construction because Greece lacks a forest register and effective legislation protecting the environment, conservationists argue. "The law," says Nikolaos...