Word: sputters
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Leaving Sadr City that afternoon, Mohanid gets a call on his mobile phone. "The American base is on fire!" he exclaims with a grin. True enough, it is. On the southeast edge of Sadr City, residents watch as flames sputter from the broken windows of a multistory building on a joint American-Iraqi base. A helicopter hovers through the thick black smoke above, airlifting Iraqi police who have been trapped on the roof, as powerful hoses blast the flames with water from below. But this was no product of the Mahdi Army, which has kept to its official "resting" stance...
...routine and further extending France's five weeks of paid vacation. Not surprisingly, several hundred cadres were the only ones protesting as legislators voted to reform their cushy work arrangement into obscurity. In that way, the new law already produced one small labor miracle: it made private sector executives sputter with a rage normally seen only among militant public sector strikers...
...Burgos' abduction grabbed headlines in the Philippines in part because of his family's prominence during the Marcos era. Arroyo herself called Edita Burgos to assure her that police would pursue the case aggressively. But from the start the investigation seemed to sputter. A week after the abduction, police told Burgos' mother that they'd found a corpse resembling Jonas. The man had been bound with a cord, strangled, shot twice in the skull, and dumped by a lonely country roadside. Edita Burgos insisted it was not her son. As part of their investigation, police also traced the license plate...
...Snow Angels have the appetites of the philanderers they see in movies but not the suave patter; a cheating husband in this town is unprepared for the inevitable lies or evasions he'll need when his wife finds out. When confronted with his indiscretions, Nate can only sputter, "Wh- why would I do that?" or the even more pathetic "Huh?" It's as if, in real life, the screenwriters are always on strike...
...budge Beemer's bottom line, given the parent company's $65 billion in sales. But owning Rolls-Royce gives BMW prestige and bragging rights. It proves it can sell cars that sweep the breadth of the market, from budget to budget-busting. Should the world's economy sputter and car sales drop off a cliff, "Rolls-Royce would probably be the first thing to go," Rhys says. But for now, like that iconic spirit of ecstasy that makes up its hood ornament, Rolls-Royce looks poised to speed ahead...