Word: spates
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Researchers play down the significance of the unusual spate of attacks. They point out that more people are entering the ocean, increasing the chances of an encounter. "The human population is expanding at a rate of knots," says Rory McAuley, a senior research scientist with the West Australian Fisheries Department. "Not only is it getting larger, it's getting more dispersed, so people are getting into the water over a greater area of the shark's range. It's probably likely to expect to see an increase in shark sightings and attacks...
...International bilked nearly 20,000 people out of $500 million in a pyramid scheme hatched by leader Gerald Payne, who claimed God would double the money of pious investors. (Dominelli pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20 years in prison, while Payne was convicted and sentenced to 27.) The spate of incidents wasn't limited to the U.S., either. When communism crumbled in Eastern Europe, one of the earliest side effects of free-market capitalism was the proliferation of people looking to get rich quick. In Albania, under Communism the poorest nation in Europe, citizens sank some $1.2 billion dollars...
...guerrilla war during the 1970s and 1980s against French business and military interests, French authorities on Tuesday nabbed a group of anarchists suspected of having sabotaged the nation's high-speed rail system over the last several weeks. The arrests aim not only to put an end to the spate of vandalism that had wreaked havoc and panic among French travelers for the past two weeks; they may also derail any violent plans French anarchists might have been preparing with like-minded extremists with whom authorities say they were in contact in Germany, Belgium, and the U.K. (See Today...
...sudden spate of sabotage capped nearly two years of sporadic vandalism to French rail lines that successive inquiries attributed to isolated, disgruntled trouble-makers. But the recent incidents showed more skill, and their perpetrators seemed able to act at will without detection. For that reason, French rail users were already rattled even before the coordinated attacks of Nov. 8. The saboteurs struck in virtually all corners of the nation without warning, and applied a high degree of knowledge and technical ability in putting the destructive metal hooks in place without being killed by the 25,000-volt power lines...
...nation's eyes were on her loss not because it was especially horrific--in a spate of shootings this summer, Chicago had seen plenty of tragedy. It was because her story was attached to another that had enthralled America. Her sister Jennifer is not just famous; she is an emblem of pop-cultural redemption, an American Idol favorite who was eliminated in the finals but went on to greater triumph with an Oscar-winning role in the movie Dreamgirls. She had transcended her backstory and her roots as a reality star to become a real...