Word: firm
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...they are slapped with the derisive term prawns. They possess weapons no human can fire, but a gang of Nigerian thugs buys up most of the stash anyway, while supplying the creatures with women who'll engage in interspecies prostitution. When local resentment reaches its boiling point, a private firm gets a government contract to cattle-herd the furriners to a new settlement, far from the city. To enforce this transgalactic apartheid, the head of the company calls on his naive, underachieving but very game son-in-law Wikus (Sharlto Copley...
...dirty job, and it gets dirtier when Wikus is infected with some alien gookum and his left arm turns creature-like. Now he's hunted by both his old firm and the Nigerians who want his prawn arm to fire the space weapons. Classic Hitchcock vectors: a man on the run from two adversaries. In '60s TV-series terms, he's the fugitive and the one-armed man. Out of options, he must find help from the species he and his kind have subjugated and slaughtered. In this monster movie, the monster is us. (See the 25 greatest villains...
...While piracy has become a common scourge off the coast of Somalia, an attack in a region blanketed with "sophisticated surveillance and extensive navies and coast guards is almost unheard of," says Douglas Burnett, a maritime partner at the U.S. international law firm of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey. It is all the more suspicious given the relatively low value of the listed cargo on board. "The cargo on the ship is timber," he says. "No one would steal a ship for timber, especially in European waters. So perhaps the lumber could be a cargo cover. Was it drugs? Was it nuclear...
...that spending on notebooks, folders, backpacks and lunch boxes will fall 16% this year. Analysts predict that electronic items like personal computers will also see a sales decline. "We expect that it's going to be a disappointing season," says Ashok Kumar, tech analyst at Collins Stewart, an advisory firm. Kumar points out that life cycles of desktop computers are stretching from four years to as much as six years; laptops used to last about three years; now consumers are getting an extra year out of them. "Parents are asking kids to make use of existing resources, just like companies...
...government's refusal to provide bailouts, Indian carriers are being forced to slash their operations and reduce ticket prices. "Indian aviation is undergoing a regime change in just four years," says Kapil Kaul, chief executive officer the Center for Asia Pacific Aviation, a New Delhi-based research firm. (Read Indian business news here...