Word: soft
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...attempt is successful has global implications. Faced with overheating markets and rising inflation, Beijing wants to ease annual growth of gross domestic product (GDP) from the current rate of nearly 10% to a more manageable 7%. But China's policymakers may lack the monetary tools to engineer a soft landing, and the specter of a Chinese crash is contributing to fears that the global economic recovery-already under pressure from skyrocketing oil prices and rising interest rates-is in peril. Asian stock markets are throwing off storm warnings: on May 10, the region's bourses tumbled by as much...
...Proponents of the soft-landing scenario note that Beijing has made great progress in modernizing its economy since 1994, increasing the country's resilience. China is now a member of the World Trade Organization, has more-diverse industries and markets, a more flexible industrial base and a better-trained workforce. Although the country's official growth target of 7% is thought to be difficult to achieve, the median prediction among economists tracked by Bloomberg holds that China's GDP growth will slow to 8.7% this year...
...slashed the airline's operating costs, making American the most efficient big-network carrier. But the airline's troubles aren't over. Despite increasing revenue and posting a modest $30 million profit in March, the airline is still losing money because of rising fuel prices. Huge pension costs, soft business travel and competition from low-cost carriers like Southwest and JetBlue could still wipe out the airline's mini-recovery...
...hysterical reaction to the threat of terrorism," the Labour-led government is moving to toughen passport, citizenship and immigration rules. But while Kiwis "cannot afford to be complacent," says Foreign Minister Phil Goff, "our border protection is probably as tough as anywhere. New Zealand is far from a soft touch...
...violence desegregation sparked in much of the rest of the South. While today educators call its schools a model of integration, in 1959, Prince Edward County locked its schoolhouses for five long years rather than comply with Brown. "It turned our lives completely around," says Rita Moseley, a slender, soft-spoken school secretary and grandmother who was 12 the year the schools closed. "I will always wonder what I would have done, who I would have been...