Word: avert
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Second, the president sincerely wanted to avert a "humanitarian tragedy at sea." Though he hadn't thought of it when he was on the campaign trail, Clinton suddenly realized that thousands of Haitians could die if they attempted the treacherous sea passage in their shabbily constructed boats...
...ANOTHER WEAPONS-INSPECTION TEAM WAS DISpatched to Iraq last Friday, one more reminder of the International Atomic Energy Agency's failure to spot and squelch Saddam Hussein's budding nuclear warfare capability long before the Gulf War even began. Now, hoping to avert a similar embarrassment, the agency is headed for a different showdown with North Korea. The IAEA has warned the insular communist regime that if North Korea does not open its doors this time, the agency will bare its teeth and press for an unprecedented U.N. Security Council-backed "special inspection" of two buildings suspected of storing nuclear...
...scientists calculate that for objects having diameters of 100 m or more that are spotted late in the game and intercepted at a distance any closer than about 150 million km (93 million miles), only nuclear explosives pack enough wallop to avert disaster. At that distance, the energy needed to deflect a 2-km-wide (1 1/4-mile) object enough to spare Earth is about the equivalent of a 1-megaton nuclear explosion. If the object gets to about a tenth of that distance, the energy required is 100 megatons, more powerful than any nuclear device yet exploded...
Moments later, two girls appear at his door, agitated and hoping he can help them avert a fight. One is a stocky third-grader, the other a fourth-grader with limpid brown eyes and cream-colored skin. "She called me a whore," said the older girl. With agonizing patience, Pannell unravels the dispute. The girls are friends. The day before, the older girl invited her friend home for the first time. There the younger child saw her friend's house was in disrepair, that the outside door was battered and punctured by what she thought were bullet holes. At school...
...plea that pulses behind the multitude of voices is one that urges us against the way we avert our eyes and close our ears. It urges us to abandon the opaque tunnels down which we race so blindly, so deafly. It urges us against the coward's impulse to step lightly around the tough issues and only ask the polite questions, while stifling those which clamor in mute repression for voice. It urges us against our penchant to accept the soundbite without listening to the sound. It urges us to turn the pointing finger inward and the embracing arm outward...