Word: abruptly
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...officials belatedly admitted that unnamed secret-service frogmen had carried out the attack, in which a photographer died, to keep the ship from protesting French nuclear tests on the Pacific atoll of Mururoa. The incident had badly shaken the administration of Socialist President François Mitterrand and forced the abrupt departures of two senior government officials. Last week's hearing was expected to reveal new details in the convoluted affair...
...dream came to an abrupt halt last week. Dunbar, 42, was sentenced to five years in prison for tax fraud, having understated his earnings by some $32 million over a three-year period. That makes Dunbar the biggest tax cheat in IRS history. Judge Marilyn Hall Patel also placed him on five years' probation after he finishes his sentence and ordered him to pay the IRS what he owes in back taxes--an estimated $10 million--plus interest...
Askar Akayev's abrupt departure took everyone by surprise-especially the people trying to oust him. Indeed, the President of Kyrgyzstan fled last Thursday before his opponents could even decide what to call the latest revolution to rock a former Soviet republic-pink? Lemon? Tulip? "We were expecting at least a couple of days of picketing," says Alexander Kim, editor of the main opposition newspaper, MSN. "No one thought [the government] would collapse in half...
After he cries about both his past tragedy and this new case that threatens disaster, Willis just barely regains composure long enough to override local authorities and take over command. While Willis has played this caring-but-tough roll before (The Fifth Element), the abrupt transitions between teary scenes and action thrills are unconvincing...
...Since the early 1990s, when Japan's economy took a fall from which it has yet to recover, the country has been gripped by a paralyzing identity crisis. This is a recurrent affliction; at moments of abrupt discontinuity with the past, such as the opening of Japan to the West in the mid-19th century and the disastrous end of the Pacific War, troubling questions reframe themselves: What is the source and nature of our uniqueness, and what must we do to thrive in the world without losing a sense of our authentic selves? The continuing absence of satisfactory answers...