Word: blowup
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Investigators analyzing the blowup of the Challenger shuttle and the disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl have found that in each case, critical errors were made by people struggling with unusual work schedules and lack of sleep. The two nuclear plant accidents happened in the wee hours of the morning. Similarly, most truck wrecks related to fatigue occur between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. "Shift workers classically have to perform when their brains are trying to put them to sleep," observes Dr. Charles Czeisler of Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital. "They are fighting the internal clock." Many...
...unlikely combination of Ronald Reagan and Muammar Gaddafi resembles nitroglycerin: it can produce an explosion at the slightest jolt. Last week, for the fourth time since 1981, just such a blowup took place in the Mediterranean skies off Tobruk, where a shootout that could have been taken right from the movie Top Gun ended in the downing of two Libyan jets by American pilots...
...OPEC's three-year struggle to prop up global oil prices seemed, at long last, to have fractured the group beyond repair. During the three-day emergency meeting in Geneva, OPEC's ministers let loose an unprecedented public display of insults, accusations and stubbornness. Yet once again the blowup failed to happen, and the group reached some broad agreements. Nonetheless, those accords showed convincingly that OPEC has lost its ability to dictate world oil prices...
...abuse, let alone make it part of the curriculum. It seemed none of the schools' business. Furthermore, molested youngsters rarely told, either cowed by a stranger's threat or, if the offender was some one close, shamed by the act or fearful of a family blowup. Besides, most grownups tended to brush off chil dren's tales of abuse as fantastic...
...tremendous potential and yet a dismal reminder of the continuing frailty of technology in challenging the cosmos. The troubles ranged from the disastrous loss of two highly sophisticated communications satellites, valued in excess of $150 million, to a rash of lesser mishaps: a clogged toilet, the mysterious blowup of a ballyhooed navigational experiment, and a sudden case of the cramps in the shuttle's Canadian-built mechanical...