Word: largest
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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INTERNATIONAL BALLOON FESTIVAL. More hot air than any convention on earth. Hundreds of giant rainbow-hued balloons converge on Albuquerque (or just above it) for the largest annual ballooning extravaganza...
...largest number spend years carting their toothbrush and T shirts from one foster home to the next, at each stop growing less hopeful, less open to the exchange of affection and trust that comes naturally to most children. "If you've got a kid who is 16 and has been in ten foster homes, you can't imagine the devastation," says Catherine Tracy, chief deputy of children's services for Los Angeles County...
...theater, a handful of Hollywood film studios shrewdly bought cinema chains to showcase their latest hits. Last week Japan's Sony put a new twist on this Hollywood strategy by plunging into the movie business as a way of selling its expanding video technology. In the largest-ever Japanese takeover of a U.S. company, the electronics giant (fiscal 1989 sales: $16 billion) snapped up Columbia Pictures Entertainment, agreeing to pay $3.4 billion and assume $1.2 billion in debts. Coming less than two years after Sony's $2 billion purchase of CBS Records, the acquisition completes the transformation of the maker...
Some entertainment-industry observers suggested that Congress should challenge the Sony deal as well. For one thing, entertainment is the second largest U.S. export industry (aerospace is first). Moreover, Pat Choate, an economist and author of a forthcoming book on Japanese involvement in U.S. politics, sees Sony as a company that zealously lobbies for its own interests and stands to gain substantial influence over U.S. public opinion. Just as overseas firms are barred from owning U.S. television stations because of the potential for spreading propaganda, Choate notes, limits should perhaps be placed on foreign ownership of Hollywood studios...
Columbia represents Sony's chance to become one of the world's largest producers of what the entertainment industry calls "software" (movies, video and recorded music). Built on chairman and founder Akio Morita's devotion to technical innovation, Sony is diversifying into cultural products as the patriarch, 68, gradually hands over control of the company to president Norio Ohga, 59, an accomplished musician. While electronic goods account for 84% of Sony's current sales, the addition of Columbia will give the company a 60-40 split between hardware and software. Says Gordon Crawford, a senior vice president at Capital Research...