Word: yanks
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...Great gave the city when he founded it in 1703 on a swamp on the shore of the Gulf of Finland. Choosing a European version of his patron saint's name to underscore his cosmopolitan ambitions, Peter built the elegant port as a window to the West, intending to yank his fusty country toward the future. When the Russians went to war against Germany in 1914, the city's Teutonic appellation suddenly became politically incorrect. Emperor Nicholas II's solution was to Russify the name, making it Petrograd. So it remained until 1924, when Lenin died, prompting the Bolshevik government...
When the Florida state comptroller announced he was going to yank B.C.C.I.'s license to operate in the state after the conviction, he received a peculiar letter from the Justice Department in Washington. "We are . . . requesting that B.C.C.I. be permitted to operate in your jurisdiction with the understanding that certain accounts may be maintained by the bank at the request of the Department of Justice which otherwise would be closed to avoid legal and regulatory violations," wrote Charles Saphos, then chief of the Criminal Division Narcotics section. "I was confused by what they wanted," says Florida Comptroller Gerald Lewis...
...casting contretemps over Miss Saigon may have been resolved, but the reverberations continue. When American actor Ken Page was cast as God in the forthcoming London musical Children of Eden, the British actors' union prepared to lodge an official protest. How could audiences accept a Yank as the Almighty? Director John Caird countered that he had auditioned British actors for the part, and all were, well, inadequate. British Equity backed off, but an official noted dryly that the union "welcomes talented foreign artists working in our country even when they are required to play such an obviously British part...
...Kremlin says the advisers will stay on until their contracts expire, though it has not said when that will happen. Among the reasons for Moscow's reluctance to yank them out swiftly are fears that Saddam would retaliate by taking hostage the 9,000 Soviet citizens stuck in Iraq. The Soviets are also eager to maintain a toehold in Iraq for the purpose of influencing the outcome of the crisis...
Stone, who planned the movie for more than a decade, was ready to do battle too. "Tom has the classical facial structure of an athlete, a baseball player," he says. "He's a kid off a Wheaties box. I wanted to yank the kid off that box and mess with his image -- take him to the dark side." So the kid goes off to war and sees a slaughtered Vietnamese family. In the chaos of a skirmish, he kills one of his own men. Paralyzed from the chest down, he finds his sex life over before it begins. In horrifying...