Word: offer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...every once in awhile, the virus shifts its genetic structure so much that our immune systems offer no protection whatsoever. (This usually happens when a flu virus found in animals - like the avian flu still circulating in Asia - swaps genes with other viruses in a process called reassortment, and jumps to human beings.) A flu pandemic occurs when a new flu virus emerges for which humans have little or no immunity and then spreads easily from person to person around the world. In the 20th century we had two mild flu pandemics, in 1968 and 1957, and the severe "Spanish...
...been here before. Graham Farquhar, a partner in Ernst & Young's employment tax division, says the mad rush "is reminiscent of what we saw during the downturn in 2001," with employees suddenly acting on perks they may have forgotten were on offer. Katarina, who lost her marketing job with a cosmetics firm in Frankfurt, joined a gym before her last day to secure a corporate discount, which saves her $40 a month. "I've been unemployed for the past month but my gym membership is still the rate of a working person's," she says...
...YouTube going high-brow? The answer involves revenue (the Edu hub has room for one or two ads on its home page), social relevance and perhaps a bit of rivalry. More than 170 schools offer content free to the public on Apple's iTunes U, which originated in 2004 as a way for colleges to distribute content privately to their own students. The partnership has been a win-win: universities get a cost-cutting distribution tool, and Apple's products become must-haves on campus...
...generous ransom payments, they're holding more than 300 sailors hostage. Phillips, captain of the Maersk Alabama, was the first one taken off a U.S. vessel. A Red Sox fan, a family man, a good-humored snowboarder, a pillar of his Vermont village who had the courage to offer himself as a hostage in exchange for the safety of his unarmed crew, Phillips is not the sort of person Americans are content to see bound, mocked and threatened in the most lawless corner of the planet. This was a hostage crisis. Had the kidnappers made it to shore with Phillips...
...terrorism. There are a lot of suggestions on the table: A system of World War II - style convoys and escorts. An international moratorium on ransom payments. Some urge arming crews, although assuming that shippers can outgun young men fitted out with the best the Somali black market has to offer is a risky bet. The best solution is likely to be military, based on inspections, exclusion zones, rapid reaction and deadly force. That is how our partners are beginning to view it. French commandos retook a yacht on April 10, killing two pirates. (One passenger was killed.) Last November...