Word: threatening
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...more than four decades, the most important foreign policy challenge facing any President has been managing relations with the other superpower. The Soviet Union is the only state that can threaten America's existence; it is the principal U.S. rival for influence around the world; and its totalitarian political system is anathema to American values...
...makers took their needs into account. One pet peeve: control buttons that must be pressed simultaneously with other keys, causing no end of problems to people whose fingers cannot stretch across a keyboard. Similarly, onscreen visual cues and hand-held pointing devices designed to make computers "user friendly" now threaten to make them inaccessible to the blind...
...warming is not slowed, scientists predict, the greenhouse effect will melt enough of the polar ice caps to threaten the water supply of New York City and the very existence of low-lying New Orleans by the middle of the next century. Areas that are now productive farmland would become parched and dusty...
...many banks and savings and loan associations are racked by troubles in the farm belt, depressed conditions in the oil patch and unwise real estate ventures all over the country. While the large majority are solidly in the black, the weakest institutions are in such bad shape that they threaten to exhaust the multibillion-dollar Government insurance funds that protect depositors. If that happens, taxpayers will have to come to the rescue. Federal regulators are confident they can clean up the mess before it overwhelms the financial system, but if the U.S. falls into a recession in the next year...
Whether or not the next test succeeds, other problems threaten to slow the countdown. Massive solid-fuel booster rockets like those on the shuttle must undergo a critical test, scheduled for Aug. 20 at the Morton Thiokol facility in Utah; the failure of a seal on a booster was responsible for the Challenger disaster. In addition, Discovery has a pressure-vent-line leak in one of its orbital maneuvering system engine pods, which came to light several weeks ago. NASA says repairs to the OMS pod, which involve cutting through a bulkhead, could delay the launch anywhere from a week...