Word: besetting
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...Indian Ocean, just as Obama was ramping up operations in Afghanistan. Most irritating to Washington has been Hatoyama's effort to renegotiate an important agreement on the redeployment of American troops stationed on the Japanese island of Okinawa. Hatoyama's stand has caused a rare chill to beset Japan-U.S. ties, leading some Japan watchers to fret over the health of the alliance. "This is probably the lowest point [for U.S.-Japan relations] since the early 1990s," when the two were engaged in bitter trade wars, says Takatoshi Ito, an economist at the University of Tokyo. (See pictures...
...doesn't help that the region is so geologically complex - with lots of fractures and offshore oil deposits likely deep underground. Or that many of the countries likely to have deposits have seen wars and unrest. Somalia remains a no-go zone, and Ethiopia's eastern Ogaden region is beset by a violent rebel insurgency. And while Mozambique's civil war may have ended in 1992, it has taken years for the country to fully recover. (See pictures of Somalia's pirates...
Disgrace already hung over the Rev. Marcial Maciel when he died in 2008 at the age of 87. In 2005, beset by burgeoning charges that he had sexually abused young seminarians for decades, the Mexican priest had resigned as head of the Legionaries of Christ, one of the Roman Catholic Church's most powerful clerical orders. In 2006 the Vatican - which under the late Pope John Paul II had been one of Padre Maciel's staunchest allies - made him give up public ministry and confine himself to a life of "prayer and penitence...
...Greek Drachmas would get you $3.33. By May 2000, that was down to 27¢. That's the way the currency crumbles in a smallish, less than rich nation beset by government budget deficits, inflation and a spotty record of economic policymaking. Convincing foreign investors to buy your debt is a struggle. Financial life is difficult in ways scarcely imagined by inhabitants of the lucky (and not large) club of nations with solid currencies...
...have against women? So often recently, romantic comedies create a female lead who's successful in business but a nag, a ditz or klutz at human relationships. And when it comes to men, she's myopic: she can't see Andy Adorable right in front of her. These afflictions beset the career gals played by Sandra Bullock in The Proposal, Katherine Heigl in The Ugly Truth and Sarah Jessica Parker in Did You Hear About the Morgans?. All were obliged to take a course in sensitivity training, at feature-film length, to nudge them into the arms of, respectively, Ryan...