Word: rashness
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...began, it was Murdoch's ventures themselves that seemed shaken up. After a rash of acquisitions ranging from TV stations and printing presses to TV Guide magazine, News Corp. found itself with $9.5 billion of high- interest debt. That burden, compounded by a worldwide economic downturn, dealt the company a $308 million loss in 1991. To pare down the debt, Murdoch sold $1.2 billion of stock and spun off such assets as the Daily Racing Form, Seventeen and New York magazine. The moves still left News Corp. with $7.5 billion in IOUs but helped it record a profit...
...witches' brew of toxic effluviums. Southbend's wells have been polluted by such chemicals as chloroform and xylene, while a black, oozing tar has bubbled upward into driveways and garages. Residents say air contaminants, such as trichloroethane, have been responsible for personal tragedies. Among them has been a rash of birth defects: in one four-month period, 11 deformed children were born; other children suffered serious heart and reproductive-organ problems. Most of the citizens have fled their homes. Many have been compensated by the courts and developers: last year 1,700 plaintiffs agreed on a settlement of $207 million...
While experts agree that the summer's rash of too-close-to-home crimes has deepened Americans' anxiety, they disagree on the triggers that have touched off the violence. Some believe the crime waves are cyclical (see box). Many fault Hollywood, which rushes sordid re-creations to TV and cinema screens before the corpses are even cold. "We have created a culture that increasingly accepts and glamourizes violence," says Dewey Cornell, a clinical psychologist at the University of Virginia. "I don't care what the network executives say. It does desensitize you." Others point accusingly at the media. "Every crackpot...
...Great Flood of '93 recedes, it is likely to leave in its wake a rash of health problems ranging from disease to chemical pollution. A variety of infections related to sanitation and hygiene, all spread by floodwater, are already giving health officials headaches. Thanks to at least 18 breached sewage plants, microbes have penetrated the nearly 800 miles of piping that keeps the Des Moines area's 250,000 residents supplied with drinking water; it & will take a month to disinfect the system. Tetanus is another concern, especially for sandbaggers and rescuers slogging through the slimy silt and sewage-invested...
Elsewhere, this might have had no official consequence. But in 1990, Washington responded to a rash of gruesome sex crimes with the bold and much debated Community Protection Act, addressing sexually violent predators. Its most controversial provision -- that at the moment of their release, habitual, violent sexual offenders may be reincarcerated indefinitely for "treatment" -- did not apply to Gallardo. But another clause permits local authorities to warn of a former "predator's" arrival in town...