Word: spate
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...real reason for the spate of Mob movies is that a few powerful artists want to make them. Directors love the form because its speed and anarchy spoke to them as young moviegoers. More important, it allows them to confront, in code, the awful ethnic schisms of American life; Italian vs. Wasp stands in for black vs. white. Actors love Mob movies because, now that the western is dead, the genre gives them one last chance to strut their maleness in a traditional setting. They can act like cowboys without having to ride a horse. And, as avatars...
...revolting tales hardly reflect what one expects of athletes -- or of sports in general. Traditionally, athletics has been viewed as a healthy outlet for natural male aggressions. But the spate of assaults has many people convinced that today's athletic environment encourages sexual violence. Reliable statistics are hard to come by concerning the number of players who commit antisocial acts, sexual or otherwise, and many experts argue that male athletes are no more prone to violence than the general male population. Still, a three-year survey completed for the National Institute of Mental Health discovered that athletes participated in about...
...assassination was hardly unusual. Drug trafficking has led to a spate of killings. However, in Mexico much of the violence is the work of corrupt police officials, who often operate under the guise of stepped-up narcotics enforcement. Despite President Carlos Salinas de Gortari's official condemnations of political corruption, complaints about savage human-rights abuses in Mexico have increased dramatically since he took office in 1988. In a report released in Mexico City two weeks ago, the Dominican Center for Human Rights declared that more than 100 summary executions took place during the first 14 months of Salinas' administration...
What the Tokyo market's downturn proves is that Japan is no longer isolated from financial forces outside its borders. Japan's first spate of trouble came late last year when West Germany raised its interest rates to battle inflation. The Bundesbank acted out of concern about the high costs of monetary union with East Germany, but the effects of its move were soon felt in Tokyo as well as in every other financial capital. Since Japan's government bonds vie with West German securities for the funds of global investors, Japan was eventually forced to increase its own interest...
...bankruptcy boom. Other improbable rescuers include First Boston, which advised Campeau to borrow more than $10 billion to buy Bloomingdale's, Jordan Marsh and seven other U.S. store chains. Some critics attack Wall Street firms for profiting from both the debt buildup of the '80s and the subsequent spate of failures. "There ought to be something unethical about cashing in on the way up and on the way down," says novelist Michael Thomas (Hanover Place), a former investment banker. "It's like a doctor who builds a trade infecting people and then purports to cure them. This would raise ethical...