Word: ending
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...aren't companies you can compete with just by starting a business out of your garage. Sure, industrial pumps, valves and seals aren't exactly sexy, but if you've owned parts-maker Flowserve over the past decade, you're probably happy with your 499% return. At the other end of the spectrum, only two media companies make the list - broadcaster Central European Media Enterprises and comic-book-based Marvel Enterprises (which Disney is buying). For the most part, companies that go head to head with an Internet full of free entertainment and information don't make the biggest bucks...
...drum set is a wooden spoon and a tin pot. Play-Doh was invented as a wallpaper cleaner. In 1943 a Navy engineer trying to smooth the sailing of battleships found that a torsion spring would "walk" when knocked over. If you stretched all the Slinkys sold since then end to end, I'm told, they would circle the earth more than 125 times. (See the top 10 children's books...
...needed to solve the problem of any writer telling a story--how do you end it? You can do a gentle fadeaway: "He went to the window and looked out into the darkness. Snow was falling gently through the spruce trees." But that's not good for half the year. If you just pause and say, "That's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children are above average," problem solved...
...other end of the fairground, beyond the bumper cars, circus tents and spinning tea cups, children line up outside Nicaragua's first public ice-skating rink, built inside a climate-controlled plastic tent that defies the scorching 95 degree heat outside. Wearing loosely laced second-hand skates with dull blades and inadequate ankle support, the excited children - most of whom have never seen ice outside of a drinking glass - giggle, flop and crash their way across the Zamboni-starved ice. (Read a story about Nicaragua's vampire problem...
...brief weeks this autumn, there were hopes that the long-running civil war in the Niger Delta in southeastern Nigeria might finally be coming to an end. President Umaru Mousa Yar'Adua announced an amnesty deal for rebels and promised billions of dollars of investment in the poor but oil-rich delta, a 10% stake for the local population in the region's oil ventures and a small monthly stipend and re-training for ex-fighters. In return, thousands of militants declared a ceasefire and handed in their weapons, while their leaders initiated talks with the government on an eventual...