Word: meagerness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...companies may be playing a losing game, and for high stakes. In the past year, many have watched their business stagnate, as past hit toys lost their novelty but few new ones seemed to capture shoppers' imaginations. Sales this year are expected to grow a meager 3.4%, compared with an average of nearly 6% over the past three years. The price of some toy stocks tumbled more than 40% in October, further than the shares of any other industry. Such leading firms as Mattel, Coleco and Worlds of Wonder all posted larger losses than usual in the normally slow first...
Most Gazans must earn their meager daily bread in Israel. Some 50,000 jam the 44-mile route to Tel Aviv each dawn to sweep streets and haul garbage and build houses. By supplying Israel with cheap labor, Gaza has virtually eliminated unemployment. Even so, Palestinians deeply resent the forced dependence. "We are enslaved," says Rashad Shawwa, 79, mayor of Gaza, who was twice removed from office by Israeli officials. "We have become the servants of Israel...
With the failure of his campaign to catch fire, Babbitt remains trapped in the vicious vise of fund raising: meager popular support cuts donations to a trickle. These hard times call for unconventional tactics. Staffers are not above recycling empty soda cans and newspapers to pay for pens and pads at the Phoenix headquarters, tucked away in a shopping mall. Frequent-flyer miles are redeemed with gusto...
...Soviets had a taste of the outside world during the era of detente, it was meager fare compared with the highly seasoned feast the Chinese have come to enjoy. Sidewalk bookstalls in provincial Sichuan now offer readers the autobiography of Archcapitalist Lee Iacocca, selected writings of Sigmund Freud, Harold Robbins' 79 Park Avenue and lavishly illustrated handbooks on how to apply eye makeup. Former students of English gather at twilight by the banks of Chengdu's Jinjiang river to practice their fractured grammar. The flashing sign above the dance floor at Guangzhou's luxury Baiyun Hotel actually reads WELCOME...
Despite their reputation for invincibility, Japanese companies do not win every competitive battle they enter. After five years of effort, Sumitomo Electric Industries has captured only 1% of the U.S. market for optical fibers, the hair-thin glass strands used in high-capacity telecommunications. Now even that meager market share is endangered...