Word: amid
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...Amid the confusion, the U.S. environmental movement is stumbling badly. In November voters turned down a passel of overly ambitious environmental initiatives at the state level, throwing the responsibility for policy back to elected officials, with whom it belongs. There is little hope, however, that either Congress or the White House will offer an environmental agenda in the near future. Exhausted by debate over the Clean Air Act and distracted by the twin threats of recession and war, Congress has no major environmental initiatives pending. The Bush Administration, all but abandoning the President's promise to be an "environmentalist...
...Amid all the grousing, hope was rising that a new, historic era of trade had begun -- with vast opportunities for U.S. exporters. To open that door, however, Bush had to waive the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which prohibited normal trade relations until Moscow allowed free emigration for its citizens. The Soviet parliament still has not passed a free-emigration law. But in the past year alone, authorities have permitted the departure of more than 150,000 citizens, mostly Jews headed for Israel, and it is likely that a satisfactory emigration law will be enacted next year. Once the law passes...
...manufactured to play them. In the air-conditioned Nevada desert, the opening of two gargantuan amusement centers dedicated to gambling and show business -- the Mirage and Excalibur hotels -- is leading Las Vegas toward its biggest year ever. In Nashville the country-music business is keeping the local economy afloat amid a tide of regional recession. Felix Rohatyn, the fiscal doctor, says the only hope for New York City, laid low by the collapse of the boom-boom Wall Street economy of the '80s, is to turn it into a tourist attraction keyed to entertainment. But the industry is also undergoing...
From her exile, the scorned theologian then produced a sweeping indictment of clerical attitudes toward sex that soared to the top of the 1989 nonfiction best-seller list in Germany. Last week Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven (Doubleday; $21.95) hit U.S. bookstores amid a squall of controversy. In a nutshell, the author contends that Catholicism "strives to impose its own moral dictatorship without regard to the welfare of married people, a dictatorship based on pleasure-hating, celibate contempt for marriage and a maniacal cult of virginity...
...string of announcements came amid signs that conservatives in the party and armed services, long on the defensive, have finally found an audience among a public that increasingly associates perestroika with long lines and empty shops. Faced with mounting criticism and declining popularity, Gorbachev may have decided that he has no choice but to loosen the reins on the KGB and military. Says Amy Knight, a Soviet-affairs analyst at the U.S. Library of Congress: "He is resorting to authoritarian, coercive measures because he is losing his ability to use more legitimate powers...