Word: alarms
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Bush Administration sounded the alarm last week against what it says is a growing threat to the U.S. economy: the value of China's currency. For 10 years, Beijing has fixed the value of the yuan at 8.28 to the dollar. But as the value of the dollar has fallen, complaints from U.S. manufacturers have grown louder that if the yuan were allowed to rise to its true value, Chinese imports wouldn't be so cheap, compared with U.S.- made products. "The situation right now with China's currency," Treasury Secretary John Snow told TIME, "is risky and unsustainable...
...fire alarm has gone off in councilman Antonio Villaraigosa's office in city hall, and the emergency strobe light is flashing, but he isn't budging. Two days after winning the Los Angeles mayoral election, Villaraigosa has business to do. It is 6 p.m., and he has been up since 3 a.m. In the past two hours alone, his assistant tells him, he has received 47 phone messages. A secretary calls security to find out if the building needs to be evacuated. But Villaraigosa, 52, once described by a fellow Democrat as having as much energy as "a hummingbird...
When the call is over and the fire alarm silenced, this former child of the poor, gang-ridden Latino neighborhood of East L.A. stretches out his arms and says, "Me, mayor of this great city? I can't believe I am standing here." Villaraigosa is poised to become the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles since 1872. Made of equal parts passion and personal charm, he acted during the campaign as if he wanted to shake hands with every one of the city's 4 million citizens. He could not be more different from the man he trounced...
...other side of Sydney, at Beverly Hills, principal Debbie Sutton, a robust, straight-talking 47-year-old, has noticed with alarm the same trend. "Years ago," she says, "parents used to think that their image in society was measured by their house or their car. Now, I think, it's whether their kids get into a selective high school." Recently, Beverly Hills surveyed its 420 pupils and found that less than a quarter played sport outside of school. "I get really concerned about the number of our kids who don't have lives," Sutton says. Adds assistant principal and Year...
Other kinds of American lawsuits provide even greater cause for alarm. In 2002, the families of several obese teenagers sued McDonald’s, claiming that the fast-food giant was responsible for making their children fat. The plaintiffs asserted that McDonald’s had deliberately misled them by withholding information about the nutritional content of its food. The mother of one of the teenagers, who, at 15, weighed in at over 400 pounds, claimed that she had “always believed McDonald’s was healthy...