backwater

Under their rule, the impoverished backwater was transformed into a flashy hub of casinos and red-light districts.

A Jewish homeland in backwaters of the Ottoman empire seemed unattainable, and pressing domestic concerns like slavery and temperance took precedence.

The family is among a handful of mafias that rose to power in the 2000s and transformed the impoverished backwater town of Laukkaing into a lucrative hub of casinos and red-light districts.

“So we’ve got to find some formula that holds the thing together a year or two, after which — after a year, Mr. President, Vietnam will be a backwater,” Kissinger said.

Few beyond North Carolina’s borders grasp the outsize role Newby, 70, has played in transforming the state’s top court from a relatively harmonious judicial backwater to a front-line partisan battleground since his election in 2004.