Word: surer
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...moving the country toward a Cuba-style dictatorship - his reforms were narrowly beaten back by a 51% to 49% margin. The result, and Chavez's graceful acceptance of it, may well have set not only Venezuela, a key U.S. oil supplier, but all of Latin America on a far surer path to democracy in the 21st century. "This was a photo finish," Chavez told his stunned backers after his defeat was announced. "Don't feel sad, don't feel burdened...
There's no surer sign of a fading soap opera than a lurid plot twist. Unlike their glossy American counterparts, British soaps like the long-running, top-rated EastEnders traditionally aim for stolid social realism, depicting ordinary folk pursuing humdrum lives. Now, though, dwindling audiences are spurring EastEnders' producers to unleash implausible killers and gothic disasters on their workaday protagonists. In a recent plotline, a character was taken hostage by his deranged stepson and saw his wife shot as she came to his rescue...
There's no surer sign of a fading soap opera than a lurid plot twist. Unlike their glossy American counterparts, British soaps traditionally aim for stolid social realism, depicting ordinary folk pursuing humdrum lives. Now dwindling audiences are spurring producers to unleash implausible killers and gothic disasters on their workaday protagonists. Take the hapless citizens of Walford, a fictional London borough that is the setting for EastEnders, one of Britain's top-rated soaps. Recent episodes have seen a troubled adolescent kidnap his estranged stepfather, chip-shop owner Ian Beale, to exact revenge for his psychopathic mother's death...
...final, pathetic chapter, Yeltsin evidently agreed to vanish from the political scene as long as Putin didn't pursue corruption cases against him. Putin then undid much of what Yeltsin had accomplished--tolerance (usually) of a free press, for example--and began to mold a Russia that is stronger, surer of itself yet more like the unforgiving Soviet state. Russia is still corrupt, but Putin has rekindled Russians' nostalgia for greatness. His popularity ratings are about 60%. Yeltsin retired quietly to his dacha outside Moscow and died last Monday, seemingly forgotten...
...Sagawa, who takes me through the procedure of landing a whale-sized seaplane on 10-ft.-high waves. Seaplanes manage to combine the worst aspects of airsickness and seasickness, and I fear that a simulated flight might make me lose my actual lunch. But Lt. Sagawa has a much surer hand that I do. "Once you get in that seat, you know right away who can do it and who can't," he says, with the confidence of years of training. It's not just superior technology that makes Japan's military better in many ways to its Asian neighbors...