Word: aback
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...heard the rumblings early on, and knew the risks of contagion were high - especially given the TV attention," says Nicolas Perruchot, a Blois native who was so taken aback by project rioting in late 2000 that he led a law-and-order campaign for mayor that unseated long-time office holder, Socialist Jack Lang in March 2001. Though Perruchot has also mounted urban renovation programs to improve public housing, and used tax exemptions to lure business and jobs out to the projects, he says he was elected on promises to restore order, by residents of the city center and northern...
...gifts between world leaders, and startled Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Wednesday by cruising up to the bamboo-fenced Kyoto State Guest House on a Segway-the two-wheeled upright self-propelled scooter of the future that is a popular rental for tourists. Witnesses said Koizumi looked taken aback, but accepted Bush's suggestion that he go for a spin. A Japanese Foreign Ministry official told reporters that Bush said he had given one of the gizmos to his parents, and he thinks of Koizumi, also, as family...
...compliance"; to Hewlett, it's "bleached-out professionalism." African-American women struggle most with perceptions of their behavior; 30% feel they are seen as "troublemakers." Jennifer Braxton, 31, held a communications job at a prestigious Philadelphia think tank. But her exuberant manner at meetings took her white male bosses aback. Other minorities who worked there suggested that she "lie low, not make any waves," says Braxton. "I'm outspoken. I'm passionate. I didn't want to have to change that." She left the think tank and became a community-outreach supervisor at Ikea, where she says she feels...
When Abu Qaqa al-Tamimi's 9-year-old son asked for his help in becoming a suicide bomber, he was, to say the least, taken aback. "This is not what you expect to hear from a little boy," says al-Tamimi, an Iraqi man in his late 40s with close-cropped hair and a thin beard lining a round face. "I didn't know what to say." The son had even come up with a proposed target. "There was an American checkpoint near his school, and he said, 'They won't suspect me because...
...party the other night, I was taken aback when a guy who I had never met before pointed at me and said, “You’re philosophy, right? Yeah, um, I kind of facebooked you.” Although impressed that he actually had the guts to admit this, I was also slightly petrified. The ironic thing is that after he told me that he had facebooked everyone in his philosophy class, I found this less creepy and was completely understanding. Why? Because I have also gone through lists of names and facebooked unknown individuals?...