Word: downplay
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...Obama overruled them. "The President has a big megaphone, and he intends to use that megaphone," senior adviser David Axelrod told ABC News of the decision to go ahead on Sept. 9, 16 years to the month after Bill Clinton tried to do the same thing. (White House officials downplay any Clinton comparison and point out that they are far closer now to the goal line than Clinton was - or, for that matter, than any Democratic President has ever been. The bill has already passed three committees in the House and one in the Senate...
...Then how did the exercise-to-lose-weight mantra become so ingrained? Public-health officials have been reluctant to downplay exercise because those who are more physically active are, overall, healthier. Plus, it's hard even for experts to renounce the notion that exercise is essential for weight loss. For years, psychologist Kelly Brownell ran a lab at Yale that treated obese patients with the standard, drilled-into-your-head combination of more exercise and less food. "What we found was that the treatment of obesity was very frustrating," he says. Only about 5% of participants could keep the weight...
...that sounded ominous, it was. In April, just a couple of months into CNPC's operations in Ahdab, power lines and equipment were sabotaged and stolen. Ministry and government officials downplay the April upheaval. Provincial authorities claim they have arrested a handful of vandals, who apologized and were released. Mahmoud Abdul Ridha, the head of the province council, chalked it up to a misunderstanding and said a committee has been formed for jobs and compensation. But some locals are still angry. Says Abu Koraichi, 58, a farmer in Alsabah village, "The sons and people of our villages will not stop...
...marked by some highly peculiar ellipses. He failed to mention anti-Semitism, instead contending that "ultimately" the Nazis' motive in killing Jews was to "tear up the taproot of the Christian faith." And although he claimed to speak as a "son of the German people," Benedict seemed to downplay any ordinary-German implication in the Holocaust. Instead, he placed blame on a "ring of criminals [who] rose to power by false promises ... through terror ... with the result that our people was used and abused as an instrument of their thirst for destruction and power...
...been a truly virulent pandemic since long before the arrival of mass air transit. We're in terra incognito here. Panic would be counterproductive - especially if it results in knee-jerk reactions like closing international borders, which would only complicate the public-health response. But neither should we downplay our very real vulnerabilities. As Napolitano put it: "This will be a marathon, not a sprint." Be prepared...