Word: downplay
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Many terrorist organizations and their sponsors seem for the moment to be lying low. But just as the devil in Christian theology is supposed to be most effective when people no longer believe in him, terrorists may be most dangerous precisely if -- and because -- the civilized world begins to downplay the threat...
Marilyn Leistner doesn't believe scientists anymore -- at least not the ones who once denounced dioxin but now downplay its dangers. Leistner was the last mayor of Times Beach, Mo., the town of 2,400 that the U.S. government evacuated and closed down in 1982 because it was contaminated with dioxin, considered by many to be one of the most fearsome of chemicals. The mayor saw dioxin's toxic effects all too clearly: the elderly forced out of their homes and into retirement centers, people so paranoid that every common illness was assumed to be dioxin poisoning, neighbors quarreling...
...become energy independent, and he views nuclear power as a crucial part of the mix. Adopting the nuclear option may accommodate an economic truth, but Tsongas has been quick to recognize a different, political truism: the fact that many Democratic voters abhor nuclear power. His speeches these days downplay nuclear's role in achieving energy independence, but on paper Tsongas notes that America's 112 nuclear plants produced the energy to cut the U.S. oil-import bill by $4.7 billion in 1989. On the basis of these figures, substituting nuclear power completely for oil imports would require more than...
...changes in 50 years. [Here the changes are listed in three lines.] But the changes can only be understood when set alongside continuities that date not only from the martial Japan of a half-century ago but also from the shogunate of a century before that. America... tends to downplay such continuities. But they provide the theme for the rise of modern Japan...
...Many 18-year-olds are poorly qualified for college and come from secondary schools that downplay basic reading and writing skills," Bossert said...