Word: mania
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Betting on Consolidation After e-commerce boom and bust comes merger mania: that was the sense last week as online travel firm lastminute.com - the money-losing, London-based icon of the Internet frenzy - agreed to a $1.1 billion takeover by Texas-based Sabre Holdings, owner of rival Travelocity. The grounds? While there's room for growth in Europe 's Web-based travel sector - as little as 10% of trips are currently booked online in the region - there's no longer room for everyone. Price pressure from major hotels' and airlines' own online operations means Web-based operators "need...
...Tamagotchi mania...
...recently discovered an unexpected ally in my mercury mania: Christian conservatives. It seems that segments of the evangelical community are starting to view environmentalism--or, as they prefer to call it, "creation care"--as part of their biblical mandate. But getting the ground troops mobilized behind a cause long scorned as touchy-feely nonsense requires a bit of creativity. (Witness the flop of the 2002 "What would Jesus drive?" campaign.) Thus some religious leaders are linking pollution to the hot-button issue of unborn tots, who, after all, tend to be the most vulnerable to environmental toxins...
...Make a Deal With merger mania back in fashion, deals are sprouting across Europe this spring. Globally, companies and investors struck deals totaling $589 billion in the first quarter, $91 billion more than a year ago, says Thomson Financial, which calculates that the level of activity in the past six months is the highest since 2000. What's propelling the merger boom? The rise of private equity investment groups, including U.S.-based Carlyle Group, which announced last week that it has raised about $2.2 billion to spend on European acquisitions. Such firms accounted for more than 10% of European deals...
...suffocating in a Stepford-perfect marriage. "I lived molded to the smallest space possible," she says, "my days the size of little beads that passed without passion through my fingers." When word arrives that her mom has cut off her index finger in a fit of religious mania, Jessie rushes off to take care of her, back to the tiny island off the coast of South Carolina where Jessie grew up. (She's secretly grateful for any excuse to get out of the house.) On the island she meets a skeptical monk-in-training named Brother Thomas...