Word: held
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...respondents reported higher satisfaction levels than did those who saw it without advertisements. Also, those who saw commercials were willing to pay more money for a DVD compilation of 15 shorts by the director of the pirate video and to donate more funds to wild-duck preservation. The results held true whether the commercials were humorous (in the case of the pirate program, viewers saw a BellSouth Yellow Pages ad featuring fighting clowns) or annoying (for the duck documentary, there were spots for fitness company Body by Jake and carmaker Hyundai). (See the top 10 TV commercials...
...booming businesses are resorting to desperate discounting to try to keep customers coming. In Hong Kong, 1,000 restaurants have joined together to offer dishes such as dim sum and roast pigeon for one Hong Kong dollar (about 13 cents). In Taipei, Taiwan's capital, fast-food chain KFC held a press conference last month to announce 50% discounts on every second meal ordered, only to have McDonald's employees interrupt by parading with signs promoting $2 lunch specials...
...Sale of the Century, as it was called, was held at Paris' Grand Palais, and it was not a sale at all but an auction of the art collected by the late iconic French designer Yves Saint Laurent and his business and former life partner, Pierre Bergé. It's understandable if you want to dismiss the hundreds of millions spent on someone else's stuff as just another example of clueless extravagance in an age of thrift. But for those with means, there was something else for sale, as valuable and just as likely to drive a person to irrational...
Still, if the incident left him feeling a little unloved, it provided a brief distraction from a roiling controversy. On Wednesday, Straw blocked publication of minutes of two Cabinet meetings held in 2003 at which ministers debated the legality of the Iraq war. At that time, Straw was Foreign Secretary. Now, as Justice Secretary, Straw explained his decision not to publish the minutes on the basis that privacy is an essential precondition for high-quality debate. "Cabinet is the pinnacle for the decision-making machinery of government" he told the House of Commons. "Confidentiality serves to promote thorough decision-making...
...controversial truce between the Taliban and the government is giving Nisar and many other Pakistanis hope that they may yet return to a vacation land that once held so many pleasant memories. On Tuesday, the Taliban indefinitely extended a fragile 10-day cease-fire with the Pakistani military, granting more time for peace talks to end more than a year of fighting. Last week's agreement to impose a form of Islamic law in Swat has many feeling encouraged that this turbulent region will finally see a return to calm. "The fighting with the military is what made it dangerous...