Word: sharpness
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Plans for a $100 billion shield to protect the U.S. against missile attacks from terrorists or rogue states like North Korea are moving full speed ahead. But budget concerns may force a sharp cutback in tests to make sure that the system works. The Pentagon plan originally called for 20 tests by 2009 to prove that a new fleet of interceptor rockets could find and destroy missiles fired toward the U.S. But a revised testing scheme to be delivered to Congress this summer--and outlined in budget documents circulating on Capitol Hill--cuts back that schedule to only nine test...
When the sun goes down, the streets empty quickly. Curfew unofficially begins at 11 p.m., but few drivers, even those earning dollars from foreigners, stay out that late. One learns to fear the shadows that move. Gunfire punches holes in the city's eerie quiet. Two sharp cracks signal an American checkpoint firing warning shots. Rapid automatic fire sounds the news that electricity has returned to a neighborhood. Most ominous of all is the single shot...
...luck of the Irish run out? While the euro zone's largest economy, Germany, is slipping toward deflation, Ireland has runaway inflation that threatens to dull the Celtic Tiger's famously sharp teeth. Although Ireland's gross domestic product grew an impressive 6.3% in 2002, its inflation, which approaches 5%, is the euro zone's highest. With prices already 12% above the euro zone's average, a new government report warns that the country will surpass Finland in 2003 to become Europe's most expensive country. In the early '90s, Ireland was one of the E.U.'s cheapest. Ireland...
...searching aimlessly for upper-class parties. In the Houses, those students who by some stroke of luck have a (decent-sized) common room, who are 21, and who are willing to shell out the necessary dough can apply to have a party which will end at 1 a.m. sharp. As often as not, something will upset the delicate balance: it will be “too noisy,” or there will be difficulty removing people from the hallways, or hundreds of first-years will show up from the Yard because nothing else is going...
...first U.S. administrator for postwar Iraq, retired general Jay Garner, had hoped to inaugurate an Iraqi transitional government dominated by former exiles as early as this week. But that plan has been put on hold as Garner found himself replaced by former ambassador Paul Bremer, following sharp warnings to Washington by U.S. officials on the ground that the situation had drifted dangerously out of control on Garner's watch. Bremer and British officials on his team have said that the process of establishing an Iraqi interim authority would be delayed at least until mid-July, but they also made clear...