Word: softeners
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Beijing has tried to soften its image by inviting the few Chinese citizens' groups based in the capital to participate in Games planning, especially on environmental issues. Is it all for show? Li Hao, an environmental activist, urges the city not to pave the beds of urban waterways in the Olympic runup. "I'm glad for the chance to speak," she says, "but I haven't seen a single person take my advice seriously." The next few months may give some indication of whether the promise of a New Beijing is real or as fake as the carnations lining...
...early to tell the extent of the damage. "While 2000 looks as if it will produce asset losses rather than gains, many firms use asset smoothing," says Adam Reese, author of the Towers Perrin study. Those calculations can soften the impact of pension expenses on earnings. Moreover, most companies do not readily break down pension-fund costs in their earnings reports. Investors may need to comb through SEC filings like 10Qs and annual reports for indications of how serious the problem...
...Greeenspan finds himself making emergency rate-cuts this winter to soften the slowdown that he himself started, it may be hard for him to deny an incoming Republican president his pet project, as long as Bush is both sensible and polite about it. After putting Clinton (and himself) in the Fiscal Policy Hall of Fame, though, he's not going to rubber-stamp a tax cut because George Bush's son asks him to, even if young George sends mutual friends to do the asking. Greenspan has a legacy of his own to worry about...
Harris' great performance has a kind of blank grimness; it contains not a single moment of charm or self-awareness. Harris never allows his exhibitions of Pollock's inexplicable gift to soften or redeem the man's monstrousness. The result is a harrowing film, impossible to "like" in any conventional way, hypnotically impossible to turn away from...
Gore wanted to sleep on it. He bucked up the weeping kids and sent everyone to bed. But no amount of sleep could soften an unsigned opinion tossed over history's transom like a ransom note penned by Kafka. You have to wonder if the Supreme Court, instead of reading election results, is now in the business of making them. The court warned that its ruling was custom fit: "Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances...equal protection...generally presents many complexities." You bet it does: like flawed machines that disproportionately failed to record legally cast votes in inner...