Word: forgiven
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That's a bit of a stretch. While their lawyers can be forgiven for downplaying the financial effects of the verdict for anxious stockholders, the tobacco companies are dreaming if they think they're going to weasel out of the damages altogether. Granted, they will never have to pay the full bill; thanks to the tobacco interests in the Florida legislature, it's now illegal to bankrupt a company via punitive damages. And at this rate, that's exactly what this kind of settlement would do; big tobacco is mortgaged to the hilt, and the companies are already chained...
This class action suit, which over the course of two years had evolved into big tobacco's worst nightmare, represented roughly half a million sick smokers. The jury (who, in the judge's words, "will all be forgiven if they never want to serve on a jury again") had already decided the companies create a "defective and dangerous" product, and awarded $12.7 million in compensatory damages to three sick smokers. And Philip Morris, Liggett, et al. would have been more than happy to see the case end there. Unfortunately for them, there are a lot of sick and dying smokers...
With scant public debate, the U.S. is on the verge of building an ever more costly missile shield. You are forgiven the doubletake. You are not, however, back in the Reagan era with its dream of a Star Wars anti-missile defense system. Reaganites and indeed many Russians believe Ronald Reagan's threat to develop such a system contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union (a thesis examined by historian Frances FitzGerald in her recent book Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan and Star Wars and the End of the Cold War). Critics then scoffed at the viability...
...impulse to commit infanticide is indeed part of our genetic legacy, can it be forgiven? Or does such a crime remain a crime no matter how strong the primal drives behind it? Anthropologists take the long view--at least when the crime is abandonment and not murder. "I think we have to re-examine the harsh penalties we place on young, uneducated women who abandon infants," says anthropologist Helen Fisher of Rutgers University. "They were dancing to primitive, natural rhythms, and they got out of synch...
...Philippines government says the tourist hostages held on one of its southern islands are safe, but the ill-starred travelers could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. On Tuesday, a spokesman for the Islamic separatist group holding the hostages vowed to decapitate two of the tourists - seized a week ago at an exclusive diving resort off Malaysia - unless the Philippines army withdraws troops surrounding the area where they're being held. But the Philippines government says retreat is out of the question. Besides having to cope with being held hostage by a fanatical organization fighting to stave off extinction...