Showing results by narrator "Kevin-Stillwell" in All Categories

It is said that bad things come in threes. If there’s any truth to that, the first two were sure as hell about to show up at my front door. I hadn’t been home long, maybe a half hour or so spent watching the lingering remnants of the Kona sunset leach from the sky while I tipped a cold bottle of Asahi to my lips. I had skipped my regular visit to Snyder’s bar, and had dropped in at Lola’s instead, in order to catch a little face time with Lani, who bartended there.

Harlowe Franklin blew out a tired, scotch-laced breath. It was May, yet he’d had Stevens light a fire before the personal concierge turned in around 10 p.m. He craved a sense of cozy, but would settle for any feeling other than the frustration that had taken up residence in his bones. The defense attorney sighed and sank deeper into the tufted leather chair, still missing the wallowed out one his wife donated to Goodwill months ago.

Today, there is essentially one accepted narrative of the economic crisis that began in late 2007. Overly optimistic homebuyers and reckless lenders in the United States created a housing price bubble. Regulators were asleep at the switch. When the bubble inevitably popped, the government had to bail out the banks, and the United States suffered its deepest and longest slump since the 1930s. For anyone who has seen or read The Big Short, this story will be familiar.

The November/December 2017 issue of Foreign Affairs.

Contrary to what Terry claims, write Delury and Moon, the collapse of North Korea is a frightening prospect, and the sudden reunification of the Korean Peninsula would be disastrous. Terry replies.

An expatriate businessman, Gregg Westwood, leaves the Officers’ Club at an American Air Base in Japan unaware about the impression he’s made on two intelligence agents. They sized him up as someone with potential for strategic deployment, and more importantly, he's under the radar. Gregg's exploits start with what he thinks is a one-off assignment as a courier, and the straightforward task spirals out of control. He's forced to rise to the occasion and use every resource available to survive. Even his family is jeopardized which forces him to return to Japan to settle scores.

Nineteen-year-old Torien Risto has seen dissidents dealt with before. He knows the young local girl who just knifed him will hang for assaulting an Imperial officer, unless he can stop it. Someone inside the provincial government is kidnapping Imperial citizens and selling them across the desert to the salt mines, silencing anyone who tries to intervene. The girl's brother is one of those who has been taken.

On the khan's orders, Tall Khenbish and his friend Batzorig journey to Russia to purchase an elephant for Mongolia's first zoo. While there, Khenbish learns of Batzorig's plot to overthrow the khan. After returning to Mongolia, Khenbish must decide who to trust - his dear friend, or the ruler that took him in?

The tip of the needle is as sharp as a thorn, but it makes only a slight indentation as it touches the bulging, blue-black surface of the vein. George Hartley marvels that something as fine and sharp as that tip—created by slicing a hollow tube at a low angle—can even graze the delicate skin without piercing it. The flesh on the inside of the elbow is thin, pale, and dusted with freckles; the vein is engorged from the elastic tourniquet on the upper arm; the machined needle is precise, purposeful, and perfect .

Nathan Porter, a young war veteran haunted by an atrocity he witnessed, ends up in an animation studio in southern California, where his dismal romantic history is upended by Violet Delmar, an older voice-over artist known nationally as "The Voice." Violet's siren song wafts in and out of Nathan's entire life, twisting through his misguided affairs and marriage, until he finds himself awakened, thanks to Violet, about no less than all of love and art.

Populism is gaining ground. Around the world, economic hardship and growing unease with globalization, immigration, and the established elite have propelled such movements into power, leading to a groundswell of public support for parties and leaders viewed as capable of holding the forces of cultural and social change at bay. In Europe, populist parties dominate parliaments in Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, and Switzerland.

Few anticipated that 2016 would see such unprecedented missile and nuclear testing in North Korea, most recently its fifth and largest ever test, reportedly coming in at 10 kilotons. But none of this should have come as a surprise. Under Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s approach to developing its strategic forces is markedly different - more aggressive - than it was under his father or grandfather.

Brazil has rarely had it so bad. The country’s economy has collapsed: since 2013, its un-employment rate has nearly doubled, to more than 11 percent, and last year its GDP shrank by 3.8 percent, the largest contraction in a quarter century. Petrobras, Brazil’s semipublic oil giant, has lost around 85 percent of its value since 2008, thanks to declining commodity prices and its role in a massive corruption scandal. The Zika virus has infected thousands of Brazilians, exposing the frailty of the country’s health system.

Almost seven years after the Great Recession officially ended, the U.S. economy continues to grow at a sluggish rate. Real wages are stagnant. The real median wage earned by men in the United States is lower today than it was in 1969. Median household income, adjusted for inflation, is lower now than it was in 1999 and has barely risen in the past several years despite the formal end of the recession in 2009.

This is a common critique of Obama’s foreign policy: that he evades hard decisions, that he is allergic to military force if it risks American casualties or escalation, that there is often a mismatch between his words and his deeds. “This is a pattern,” one retired four-star general said. “He issues stern warnings, then does nothing. It damages American credibility.”Is the charge true?

In a biological sense, last year’s Ebola epidemic, which struck West Africa, spilled over into the United States and Europe, and has to date led to more than 27,000 infections and more than 11,000 deaths, was a great surprise.

Released in 1974, Sweet Home Alabama has become synonymous with Southern rock. From its opening guitar riff, it is instantly recognizable, a raucous, irreverent defense of a Deep South state and its segregationist governor against the jabs of Neil Young. But the roots of Lynyrd Skynyrd's best-selling anthem go much deeper than regional pride or resentment of a fellow rocker.

In Launch, Khalid Alzanki shares principles and rules that trump traditional concepts and methods of marketing. Plus, he tells you some of the secrets used by giant corporations when they launch new products and concepts. His valuable information will show you what to do step-by-step to ensure the success of your launch.

The mood of much of the world is grim these days. Turmoil in the Middle East, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees; random terrorist attacks across the globe; geopolitical tensions in eastern Europe and Asia; the end of the commodity supercycle; slowing growth in China; and economic stagnation in many countries - all have combined to feed a deep pessimism about the present and, worse, the future.

Obama's signature international economic initiative is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), but bipartisan majorities of both houses of Congress have insisted that the TPP forcefully address the manipulation of exchange rates. Here's how to resolve this dilemma.