Word: problem
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...than drug dealers and racketeers. By a 5- to-4 vote, the Justices held that states do not have to provide free attorneys to such criminals seeking to challenge their convictions after losing their initial direct appeals. Observed law professor Franklin Zimring of the University of California, Berkeley: "The problem of sufficient due process when it comes to the death penalty is insoluble. You either finance the endless relitigation of these cases, or you discriminate against the poor." Two other major capital-punishment decisions are expected this week, along with the anxiously awaited ruling on whether abortion should remain constitutionally...
...cultures. There are evidently cultures where it is considered basically good etiquette to keep your left-turn signal on at all times. Then there are people who feel it's important to buy the largest possible car, the kind you can land aircraft on top of with no problem, and they drive them incredibly slowly. At the same time, there are people who cannot imagine going less than 70 m.p.h., including in their driveways. Then the politics here is amazing. I mean, we have rallies here for the right to sacrifice chickens...
...Martin Cruz Smith showed a good way to turn one among the thousands of detective novels published annually into a runaway best seller. The three crucial steps: 1) construct a plot with plenty of corpses and exfoliating complexities; 2) provide a beleaguered and therefore sympathetic hero, one whose problem involves not only solving a crime but avoiding extermination by a small army of people who do not wish the truth to be known; 3) set the action in a place that is inaccessible and romantically forbidding -- in the case of Gorky Park, Moscow and environs...
...Murder? Bad. Suicide? Much better. In the good old days, the inconvenient matter could have been put on ice until the ship returned to its home port of Vladivostok, where the official party whitewash would have explained everything. Not now. The ship's captain understands the new realities: "The problem is the Americans. They will watch to see whether we conduct an open and forthright investigation...
...squeezed into only 413 sq. mi., Hong Kong finds itself burdened by the presence of more than 44,400 asylum seekers -- and more boat people are pouring in despite the colony's year-old attempt to close its doors. About 20,000 have arrived so far this year. "The problem is that it is an unending problem," explains Fazlul Karim, head of the local office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Hong Kong, he says, is "completely...