Word: outfit
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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WHEN RINALDO PIAGGIO founded his factory in 1884 at the height of the Belle Epoque, world travel was booming, so ocean-liner fittings naturally were a no-brainer. Soon Piaggio was outfitting luxury trains and car engines too. But when World War II began, he shifted his business to passenger airplanes and bombers?a risky move, because the military importance of his factory made it a prime target. Piaggio's outfit was bombed, and the family lost everything. It wasn't until Rinaldo's son Enrico took over after the war that the Vespa was born...
...Murtha sounded an awful lot like Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who, according to high-ranking military officials, has seemed slightly annoyed that the war in Iraq has diverted resources from his real goal of "transforming" the military into a high-tech outfit that can scare the bejeezus out of China. Rumsfeld's Pentagon has refused to undertake the violent reordering of priorities-more special forces, more intelligence, zero boats-needed to fight a scruffy, labor-intensive struggle against an enemy that thrives in shadows in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Rumsfeld's relative indifference to the shooting war since...
This odd legal standoff in the all-important U.S. market shows little sign of ending, as neither Republican efforts to stiffen the laws nor Democratic efforts to loosen them are getting anywhere in Congress. In the face of such inertia, gaming firms are getting brazen. One British outfit, Sportingbet, runs ads on ESPN for its Sportsbook.com site and recently put up a huge billboard in New York City's Times Square featuring a pretty model and the slogan EVERYBODY BETS. PartyGaming CEO Segal says big American media groups seem less reluctant to air gaming ads than they were...
...cotton farmers aren't the only ones feeding at the government welfare trough. According to the Environmental Working Group, a Washington lobby outfit, last year the U.S. doled out more than $12 billion in subsidies to its farmers on everything from corn to sugar to tobacco. The Europeans spew out subsidies, shelling out $53 billion. With cotton, as with other crops, all those subsidies distort global trade by encouraging U.S. farmers to produce more, which drags down world cotton prices and hurts farmers such as Diarra. "I don't blame the Americans, but I want them to allow...
...unshakable national positions suddenly melt away in compromise. Then comes the spin. "Trade negotiators are famous for saying that the agreement they've just struck is not a good one," says an official at the WTO secretariat in Geneva, who jokingly describes the group as the "half-a-loaf outfit?not what we wanted but still better than nothing...