Word: beset
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...while some high-profile parts of the city are burgeoning, a lot of the rest is coming apart at the seams. A record-setting rampage of arson has beset Boston this summer, especially in its poor neighborhoods. The fires could not have come at a worse time: 469 of the city's 2,039 fire fighters (and 1,941 other municipal workers) have been laid off during a two-year fiscal crisis. Racism is singularly virulent and regularly violent. After eight years of court-ordered busing, the proportion of whites enrolled in the city's public schools...
...Inside a beset regime...
...Indeed, for many countries the problems are intensifying, and governments that have tried to expand their economies while others were battling inflation are rethinking their policies. Rocked by a falling currency, France slapped a four-month wage and price freeze on its economy and devalued the franc by 10%. Beset by near record interest rates and high unemployment, Canada unveiled an austere budget that would limit salary increases for its federal workers to 6%, or about half the rate of inflation. Faced with an alarming government deficit, Belgium took the unprecedented step of prohibiting cost of living increases to pensioners...
...enable it to avoid a similar disaster. Unlike Iran, the population is culturally homogeneous, and shares more closely its own brand of Islamic religion. Moreover, the royal family is closely allied with the religious leaders and popular as well with the rest of the people. Nor is the kingdom beset by a teeming urban center with an underclass ripe for revolt. Observes one U.S. expert: "You really don't have the same economic strains in the modernization process. The government has kept inflation to around 8% a year, and there simply isn't any unemployment." Even...
...from 20% to 25% in one week. More important, Thatcher's Conservative Party last week won a plurality of about 40% in nationwide local elections, the largest percentage of any party since age of any party since World War II. The nation was still rallying behind a leader beset by foreign foes...