Word: scuppering
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Obama, for all his game-changing intentions, end up inheriting Bush's Iran stalemate? Two key factors have combined to scupper his diplomatic efforts: Iran's domestic political year of living dangerously, and the fact that the new Administration bound its diplomacy to tight deadlines and to the same goal as its predecessor - persuading Iran to abandon uranium enrichment, even for peaceful purposes. That combination of factors was clear in the fate of the Tehran Research Reactor fuel deal, which Obama's own deadline had turned into a kind of last-chance ultimatum...
...that setbacks to the LHC occur because of "reverse chronological causation," which is to say, sabotage from the future. The papers suggest that the Higgs boson may be "abhorrent to nature" and the LHC's creation of the Higgs sometime in the future sends ripples backward through time to scupper its own creation. Each time scientists are on the verge of capturing the Higgs, the theory holds, the future intercedes. The theory as to why the universe rejects the creation of Higgs bosons is based on complex mathematics, but, Nielsen tells TIME, "you could explain it [simply] by saying that...
Rarely does a human-rights investigation cause the kind of geopolitical ruckus that has been generated by the U.N. probe into last winter's fighting in Gaza that left more than 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead. Israel is mounting an 11th hour diplomatic blitz to scupper U.N. discussion of the Human Rights Council investigation led by South African judge Richard Goldstone, which accuses the Israeli army and Palestinian Hamas militants of committing war crimes. Israel insists the probe is biased and, in the words of Defense Minister Ehud Barak, "twisted, fraudulent and tendentious." At a Security Council meeting...
...have to stop using Lebanon as a battlefield. On the one hand, Syria could use Hizballah's political and military victory to work its way back into dominance over Lebanon, which Syria occupied until 2005. Hizballah's strengthened government role will help Syria get the new Lebanese government to scupper plans for a U.N. tribunal to investigate the assassinations of a series of anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians and journalists. Syria will also probably want to stop Lebanese attempts to tighten controls over their porous common borders, through which Syria probably sends Hizballah weapons...
...judgment, handed down by Lord Justice Moses and Justice Sullivan, censured Robert Wardle, director of the SFO, for allowing threats made by Saudi officials to scupper the probe into allegations of bribery. The Blair government called a halt to that investigation in December 2006, a decision it insisted was made purely in the interest of national security. The court was scathingly unconvinced. "No one, whether within this country or outside, is entitled to interfere with the course of our justice," the judges ruled. "It is the failure of Government and [Wardle] to bear that essential principle in mind that justifies...