Word: direness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...voters to deliver a resounding 'yes' on the Irish peace accord in Friday's referendum. TIME London bureau chief Barry Hillenbrand reports that anxiety over a "no" vote had increased after the initial euphoria over the deal gave way to mounting fear in the Protestant community -- spooked by the dire warnings of rejectionists -- that the early release of convicted IRA terrorists would set killers loose among them. Blair was at pains to reassure voters today to stress that parties committed to violence would be isolated by the peace process...
...dire need of foreign currency, the junta has sold off Burma's timber, oil and gas to multinational corporations, has turned a blind eye to the flourishing opium trade and has gone begging to multinational banks and international donors. The foreign reserves it gains allow the regime to buy weapons and maintain a brutal control exercised in the 1998 massacres of demonstrators and students. The military establishment has maintained its power over much of the country despite rebellion by oppressed ethnic minorities and the democratic election which the military lost...
...Houses, we are told, are to become our homes away from home. Yet forcing smokers to stand outside their doors to have a cigarette tarnishes this ideal. Working smokers congregate outside their office buildings for a smoke break, not outside their homes. In dire need of someone to make a cogent defense of the right to smoke in the Houses, we find critics with unsatisfying, pragmatic objections. Outgoing Lowell House Master William H. Bossert '59 only objected to the policy on the grounds that it would be difficult to enforce and "lots of people standing outside the House, smoking" would...
From her field office in the town of Alto Paraiso, 150 miles north of Brasilia, Mitraud bears a message to locals that is a delicate mix of dire warnings and creative alternatives. Unless you take steps now, she says--use natural fertilizers, market the cerrado's evergreen flowers and fruits, or turn county-size chunks of the region into nature parks for tourists--your children will inherit a wasteland. The message seems to be getting through: in and around Alto Paraiso, a fourth of the residents live off enterprises that don't involve trashing the land...
Jennifer is not alone. Many abused low-incomewomen are in similarly dire straights...