Word: sputtered
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...Still, roughly 25% of final exports from Asia are bound for America, and with consumer spending in the U.S. slipping, the manufacturing engines that drive many Asian countries are starting to sputter. The most vulnerable are those with high dependence on exports, such as Taiwan, South Korea and Vietnam. In China, weak export orders combined with rising costs are forcing tens of thousands of small factories to close in the country's industrial zones. The woes of exporters are felt throughout the region, which is tightly linked by trade in manufacturing parts and machinery. Slower sales to the U.S. mean...
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...