Word: worldly
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...photographs tell a tale of what is being lost. Sakamaki wandered through old mud-brick quarters destined to be bulldozed and glimpsed the steel-and-glass materialist world that Chinese planners see rising above the rubble. Much of his work is suffused with a melancholy he allows to be dubbed "poetic." It is the picture, in many instances, of a people resigned to defeat...
...climate change, unsafe cities and environmental degradation, but also that the brunt of tragedy is borne by poor countries least equipped to deal with such misfortune. In 2008, 98% of natural disaster - related fatalities occurred in Asia, according to the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington-based research group. At a World Health Organization summit last month, health ministers from Southeast Asia announced that from 1998 to 2009, 750,000 people had perished from natural disasters in their region alone...
...disasters give these developed economies an excuse for technological improvement. So while Japan invests in high-tech skyscrapers designed to withstand the inevitable next earthquake, the West Sumatran capital of Padang - which scientists long predicted would be shaken by a killer quake because it sits astride one of the world's most active fault lines - was crowded with poorly built buildings that crumbled when the earth shuddered on Sept. 30. Similarly, in the Philippines, the vast flooding triggered by Ketsana was largely the result of insufficient drainage. In fact, the U.N. estimates that when equivalent populations in the Philippines...
...profit-driven Western corporations. Corporations have moved to manufacture in China en masse because of very cheap labour, minimal regulation and the ability to externalize other costs, namely the environmental impact. This has then indirectly improved China's lot. How has China otherwise added value or changed the world for the better in modern times? Innovations? Improvements to the human condition? Global benevolence? Becoming the world's temporary sweatshop and biggest copycat does not place one in the league of great nations or ensure superpower status. So, on turning 60 what is going to be your real contribution...
...junta has survived and prospered despite two decades of ever tightening sanctions. Yet the years have not dimmed its desire to have those sanctions lifted. "Many people say [Than Shwe] doesn't care what the world thinks, but he does want pariah status removed," says Rogers. He also wants "a veneer of legitimacy" and hopes the planned 2010 elections will provide it. Than Shwe has vowed to create a so-called "discipline-flourishing democracy" that will not only entrench military rule but protect his legacy - and his skin. In 2002, suspecting a plot against him, Than Shwe...