Word: important
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...born in relative poverty, the son of an unassuming parson who died when the boy was seven. He was thereupon adopted by his childless uncle Thomas, a Gargantuan export-import trader (tea, codfish, whale oil) who had built the first mansion on Beacon hill. Uncle Thomas put young Hancock through Harvard, class of '54, and then eight years in the counting room of the House of Hancock. When Thomas Hancock died, he left his 27-year-old nephew a fortune of ?80,000, the largest in New England...
...Minor Import. What triggered the rioting was an issue that clearly was of minor import to the government, yet had great symbolic importance in the ghetto. In 1974 the Pretoria Government Education Department ruled that students in Soweto's schools−about 250 of them serve at least 200,000 pupils in triple shifts−must take some subjects in Afrikaans, the Dutch-based language that, along with English, is one of the two official languages for white South Africa. What particularly angered the students was that blacks in tribal areas were allowed to opt for classes in either...
Tiny HONG KONG boasts of one of the region's healthiest film industries, but elsewhere in Southeast Asia film production is skimpy. Indonesia produced 35 titles last year, but imported another 400. Malaysia's production is even more paltry, though the government recently announced plans to establish a national film corporation. In socialist Burma there remain 100 privately owned companies. But only ten have their own cameras, and the government restricts the import of film. All of Burma's movie houses have been nationalized. South Korea produced 94 films last year. But the melodramas were...
Bourke's law explains the big surprise of 1976: the sales flop of the once-vaunted subcompacts. Detroit invested heavily in these small, $2,900-to-$3,400 cars as an answer to the import threat. Imports have indeed been suffering this year; their share of the U.S. auto market, more than 18% last year, has skidded below 14% so far in 1976. But the foreign makes have been hurt more by their own rising price tags than by any bumper-to-bumper competition from their U.S. rivals. American subcompacts, which captured 10% of the U.S. auto market following...
...there was indeed no evidence, for the moment at any rate, of a massive flight from sterling. Yet the sudden plunge left no doubt about just how vulnerable the buffeted pound is to the gusts of the marketplace. The slide was touched off when Swiss banks, anticipating new import controls on foreign capital moving into Switzerland, converted sterling into the solid security of Swiss francs. Even this light selling wave was enough to tip the pound into its tailspin. Said one London currency dealer gloomily: "It's not so much that people are selling pounds. Nobody wants...