Word: spate
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...International Committee of the Red Cross broke its customary public silence in October 2003, pushed to do so, it said, by a spate of suicide attempts. "One cannot keep these detainees in this pattern, this situation, indefinitely," a senior official said. By then, the official number of suicide attempts was 32, though I knew it was actually far higher. The military kept the number low by labeling most attempted suicides as "manipulative self-injurious behavior" or "self-harm" incidents, a practice that became more frequent as time went on. In January 2005, the Pentagon disclosed that 350 "self-harm" incidents...
Corporate executives, however, have been anything but cautious. Beginning with a spate of billion-dollar oil-company buyouts in 1981, the merger wave has rolled over virtually every industry. This year alone, acquisitions have produced the largest U.S. gas distributor (Internorth-Houston Natural Gas), a medical giant (Baxter Travenol-American Hospital Supply), a vast food-processing concern (Nestlé-Carnation) and one of the mightiest high-technology combinations (Allied-Signal). Last week even brought a proposed sports marriage between the New Jersey Generals and the Houston Gamblers of the U.S. Football League. The number of megadeals this year could wind...
...provocation. The Argentine President abruptly declared a nationwide state of siege last week, suspending for 60 days all constitutional guarantees against arbitrary arrest. As he outlined the draconian measure, Interior Minister Antonio Tróccoli stressed the "worsening and persistence" of violence in the country, a reference to a spate of minor bombings that began more than a month ago. Tróccoli knew whereof he spoke: a day before, a bomb had exploded outside his weekend home, injuring...
...spate of buyouts has raised fears that companies may be crushed by their huge debts if interest rates climb or the economy falls into a recession. Other critics call going private a waste of scarce capital. "As a financier, I regard it as an easy way to get rich," says Martin Whitman, president of M.J. Whitman & Co., a Manhattan investment firm. "But as a citizen who loves his country, I think there are better and more productive uses of the nation's money supply than to create debt to pay off stockholders...
...years ago, such a vote would have seemed unnecessary. Economic recessions came and went, prices continually climbed, but Americans always kept buying more and more cigarettes. Today, though, while the $18 billion tobacco industry remains very profitable, the element of predictability is gone. The industry is facing a spate of product-liability suits and, for the first time in its history, a period of declining consumption. Unit sales peaked in 1981, when Americans puffed on 640 billion cigarettes. By the end of this year, consumption is expected to be down 7% from that level...