Word: direness
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...close to a vote, the textile measure is a kind of test case of protectionist sentiment. Present outlook: some version of it will sail through both chambers of Congress; after all, bipartisan majorities of both House and Senate have signed on as co-sponsors. Reagan will veto it, repeating dire warnings that U.S. protectionism could once again provoke foreign retaliation against what remains of American exports (which is plenty: the U.S. is still the world's biggest exporter by 27% over runner-up West Germany). Such retaliation is what happened after Congress passed the disastrous Smoot-Hawley tariff...
...final week of the anniversary commemoration, U.N. officials are searching for a diplomatic way to hold the pronouncements of visiting statesmen to 15 minutes apiece. Their solution: dignitaries will be warned that if their eloquence runs long, "night meetings will be required with all the ensuing consequences." Dire consequences indeed: cocktail parties delayed and curtain times missed...
...Beirut refugee camps, which have been under attack by Lebanese Shi'ites for the past three weeks. The Shi'ites want to drive out the Palestinians to make sure that the P.L.O. will never again be able to set up a "state within a state" in Lebanon. After several dire threats, the hijackers freed the passengers, blew up the plane and sped off in a Range Rover, disappearing into the Shi'ite neighborhoods near the airport...
...Amherst: "I speak as one of the oppressed in South Africa. I reject and transcend the racial categories that are imposed on us at the present time by an oppressed system, and I speak to you on behalf of the people of South Africa. It is customary to make dire predictions at this point to the graduates in order to prepare them for what is referred to as 'the real world.' I decline to do so. Not that I could not make dire predictions, but because I think it is artificial to separate the campus from the community. The pressures...
Efforts to stem the arboreal tide have been futile. Stymied by a small budget, the National Park Service so far has been limited to spraying herbicides on some stands of Australian pines and attacking Melaleuca by slashing it with machetes and filling the cuts with toxic chemicals. "It's dire," says Marjory Stoneman Douglas, president of Friends of the Everglades, a conservation group. "If nothing is done, these trees are going to take over completely...