Word: direness
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...NOTTING HILLBILLIES: MISSING . . . PRESUMED HAVING A GOOD TIME (Warner Bros.). Mark Knopfler, of Dire Straits, and three mates of similar musical inclination cook up a relaxed set of old-time guitar music and dusty folk. A sort of after-hours version of the Traveling Wilburys, with a solid Knopfler original (Your Own Sweet Way) nestled among the well-roasted chestnuts...
...have passed since the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, but the grim legacy of the Soviet catastrophe is still unfolding. Large populated areas surrounding the reactor site in the Ukraine and in nearby Belorussia remain contaminated with high levels of radioactivity. The poisoning of the land has created dire health problems and economic devastation. A new study by the chief economist of a Soviet government institute calculates that the cost of Chernobyl, including the price of the cleanup and the value of lost farmland and production, could run as high as $358 billion -- 20 times as much as earlier...
Even as they stake their claims to the American West, Asians are encountering problems: racism, the ambivalence of assimilation, the perils of prosperity, ethnic jealousies and the sometimes dire inequities of a laissez- faire society. Asians in general are still strangers in the Western paradise, and they are keenly aware of their status...
While the entire S&L bailout is expected to cost taxpayers as much as $300 billion, the dire shortage of sleuths is partly caused by the Bush Administration's unwillingness to lay out a measly $25 million. Last year the Administration requested $50 million for the assault on S&L villains. Congress upped the authorization to $75 million, but the Administration balked. "If the violators don't believe they're going to be caught and stiffly sentenced, they're going to keep doing it," warned Georgia Democrat Doug Barnard Jr., the subcommittee's chairman and a former banker himself...
Most distressing for many Soviet clients is the "new thinking" that is shaking Moscow's foreign policy. The growing superpower rapprochement has curbed the rivals' appetites for backing regional wars and propping up shaky governments to gain an ephemeral geopolitical advantage. In dire economic straits itself, Moscow has grown disenchanted with a strategy that annually pumps well over $19 billion into the Third World -- two-thirds of it in military assistance and much of it not repaid -- for little or no dividend...