Word: firm
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...nature of real estate that the crumbling may continue for a while yet. "It's way too premature to be talking about light at the end of the tunnel--it's still pitch black," says Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, a research firm. Shepherdson, not a congenitally bearish sort, was one of several prominent forecasters who began warning of housing troubles in 2005. Now he sees huge quantities of unsold inventory, which will lead to more cutbacks in construction, which will lead to more job losses and so on. "I don't want to call...
...disadvantaged brainiacs get older, 25% of them drop ranks in math in high school, and 41% don't finish college. "We're losing them at every stage in education," says Joshua Wyner, executive vice president of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, which wrote the report with public-policy development firm Civic Enterprises...
...fresh corruption storm cloud is brewing over Arroyo's government. Members of her government have been accused of ramping up the price of a government broadband contract with a Chinese firm, ZTE Corp. The country's Supreme Court has issued a restraining order to keep the deal from going through for now. Opponents have resurrected old, unsatisfactorily resolved scandals as well, including one that involves her election victory in 2004. All this could slow down her government as Arroyo approaches her last two years in office...
Support for a putsch has been building in Washington to replace Maliki with Iyad Allawi, the former Prime Minister. Allawi hired the Republican lobbying firm of Barbour Griffith and Rogers to get American backing (though he subsequently tried to create some illusion of distance by having his political party technically hire the firm). The subtext of Allawi's message is, who cares about democracy and the will of the Iraqi people? I'm Washington's man, not Tehran's. Never mind that Allawi has little support among Iraqis...
...exercise in extremes, either a thigh-challenging balancing act or a luxurious pampering. Back at Tokyo Midtown, as I watched the dogs cruise by in their custom strollers, I wondered if Japan's vaunted toilet-makers have considered creating a pet-friendly washlet. After all, at least one firm is busy trying to develop commodes that can do everything from test for pregnancy to check the glucose levels of diabetics. A high-tech pet potty can't be that much harder to construct, and then at least those pampered greyhounds wouldn't have to leave the cool confines...