Word: usual
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...patient's condition worsened. In desperation, the police sent his urine to Britain's Atomic Weapons Establishment, which has equipment beyond the reach of any hospital. There, experts discovered Litvinenko's urine was teeming with radiation--not the gamma rays they had been looking for, which are the usual culprits in radiation poisoning because they can penetrate steel and concrete, but alpha particles, which can be blocked by a single sheet of paper or a layer of human skin. If they get into your bloodstream, though, alpha particles will destroy everything they touch. The Chernobyl occurs inside. This...
...Realpolitik" dictated, for example, that the Soviets' downing of a Korean airliner in September 1983, killing 269 people, was not allowed to significantly interfere with business as usual. And "realpolitik" eventually paid off - at least for the West - as the Soviet Union disappeared a few years later without a shot being fired. Today, "realpolitik" has given way to "realeconomics" - who cares if Moscow bumps off its citizens in Chechnya or elsewhere as long as the oil and natural gas are flowing from Russia? The West reacts most loudly when its investments in Russia are endangered...
...cluttered office on the rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau. "Hôtel Drouot, for example, is a place where you see people selling their estate, and when they do, you see really their whole life. It's not just an auction house with glamour sales of famous paintings." Among his other usual haunts: a gardening bookshop, a restaurant for the blind and a very reliable Parisian shirtmaker. Here's a peek inside the little black book of one of fashion's greatest footwear designers...
Unlike the usual nonfiction works or thrillers that center on this issue, which tend to focus on the historical and political reasons behind an attack or play up the drama of the situation, Patchett’s beautiful story focuses on the unlikely relationships that develop between 58 dinner party guests and the 18 terrorists who hold them hostage for over four and a half months...
...only kids who get excited. Tim Mack of Belt, Mont., was on his way to the convention this year when he took a break at a truck stop. After the usual eager kids, two women approached, and Mack told them a funny story. Charmed, they asked whether Santa always went around trying to pick up women. Mack's wife Dana, nearby, had a ready reply. "Santa," she confirmed, "is just a chick magnet...