Word: powerlessness
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...high roaring down an alley of the factory complex alongside the city's namesake river. The blaze churned into an inferno that leapt explosively from building to building, incinerating one instantaneously and then--boom!--vaulting on to the next. In the end, some 1,000 fire fighters were powerless to stop it. Fueled by a variety of industrial-use chemicals stored in the structures, the fire consumed wooden flooring as though it were paper and blasted through brick walls, sweeping to residences in an adjacent neighborhood. By nightfall, said Police Lieut. Richard Wolak, the stricken area looked like "four blocks...
...sound is as pure and compelling as a siren song, and consumers seem powerless to resist. They have been snapping up compact disk players, which reproduce music with near perfection, at a rate that is overwhelming both retailers and manufacturers. Annual sales of the newest high-tech wonder, which came on the U.S. market in 1983, should reach 1 million next year. That will make the CD player the fastest-selling machine in home-electronics history. The videocassette recorder took six years (from 1975 to 1981) to reach the same milestone. "We're selling every single...
...both the Parent, who keeps trying to enforce ancient injunctions, and the fun-loving Child, who is the victim of the stern Parent. The man who says to himself "Now you've done it!" after making a mistake is using his Parent to reprimand his Child, who usually feels powerless and in the wrong...
...special flights date back to 1957, when U.S.-Polish relations were more amicable. But, said the Polish government announcement last week, "continuation of this particular privilege would be difficult in view of the discriminatory treatment our country receives daily from the U.S. & Administration." The U.S. is powerless to reciprocate beause Polish diplomats in Washington only have to go to their local A&P to do their food shopping. Said U.S. Embassy Spokesman Paul Smith: "We will manage to get by." The inconvenience will not last long: the embassy is arranging to have rations trucked in from West Germany...
...explosive day in April 1975, Christian militiamen ambushed a Palestinian bus in East Beirut, killing 37 passengers. That action is generally recognized as the incident that sparked the civil war. The present government of "national unity," set up last year under Syrian aegis, is virtually powerless, and the country continues to be beset by sectarian fighting, most seriously last week around the southern port city of Sidon. There, for the third week in a row, Christian militiamen battled Muslim units of the Lebanese Army and Muslim irregulars...