Word: panic
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...latest panic over bovine spongiform encephalopathy and its brain-wasting human variant, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, erupted late last year. The first trigger was the recall of possibly tainted beef-believed to be the main vector of human infection-by three French supermarket chains. Then came reports that Germany, Spain and Italy, previously untouched by the epidemic, had discovered their first bse cases. "I lost between 50% and 60% of my customers overnight," says Paris butcher Alain Lamarchand...
...Clearly, Europeans' flight from beef is leading them to seek alternatives. The most obvious are lamb, pork, poultry and fish, all of which have enjoyed increased sales since the latest outbreak of mad cow panic. For the truly health-conscious, however, there are potential problems with most of these alternatives. Sheep are susceptible to scrapie, a brain-destroying disease that may be the origin of bse. Mass-produced pork is bulked up with antibiotics and, illegally but not uncommonly, with hormones, while battery chickens are often similarly drugged. Though there is no indication that fish can harbor the bse prion...
...LeapFrog's Fall 2001 line of educational toys, is a touch-sensitive coloring book that chatters away, guiding kids through reading and writing lessons. The company's game plan is to offer free printable pages (with sound effects) on the Web so Mom and Dad won't start to panic as their little reader nears the letter...
Turkey this week looks a lot like Russia, Brazil or Thailand during the Asian currency crisis of 1997 - financial panic, a crashing currency and interest rates that reached 17 percent a day before the central bank had to let the currency slip into free fall...
...sure if the panic will spread beyond Turkey's borders, but within the country the economic situation threatens the political stability of a NATO member that for the U.S. is a valuable buffer against fundamentalist Islamism in the region. Not to mention another black eye for the U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund, which bailed out Turkey last year and seems in danger of losing its investment. TIME stringer Andrew Finkel, who works out of Istanbul, comments on the developments...