outlay But those hoping for new or even replenished foreign-aid outlays should not hold their breath;there will be little money to throw at problems.

paranoid Andy Grove,the Intel CEO,… Has distilled the essence of competing in a high-tech world down to a single sentence:―Only the paranoid survive.

pariah For decades South Africa was an international sports pariah． pestilence Soon the bikini was causing international incidents．France's Mediterranean neighbors reacted as if some pestilence were spreading．Italy and Spain forbade bikinis on their beaches． ploy It was a familiar ploy for Sun's Joy,who helped foster the growth of the Internet itself in the early 1980s by shipping free Internet Protocol software with every Sun computer.

precursor Under the tutelage of Dan Leno,London's most beloved comedian and a precursor of Charlie Chaplin,Lizzie became a star… prowess Japanese corporations were quick to seize the chance of putting their technological prowess on show.

pundit Some pundits speculate that many computers are obsolete before they're even designed,which goes a long way toward explaining why the ATM at my grocery store never works． qualm They have no qualms about bestowing their inner life on a dozen members of the next generation.

rancor The nuclear material was made in Russia,and both Washington and Almaty(Kazakhstan's capital)knew they had to gain Moscow's approval for the unprecedented transfer．It did come,and apparently without rancor,in June.

redoubt In the past decade,an economic megaboom on this offshore Nationalist Party redoubt has produced one of the world's largest nest eggs of foreign-exchange reserves． remnant The setting was one of the wild,unspoiled sea islands off Georgia-to visitors,they seem like remnants of the New World as it was before its discovery． reprimand The Navy claims it punished Meyer with a letter of reprimand that effectively ended his career.

rigor A committee of Taiwanese curators and university scholars… Examined the works that were ready to be crated and requested that certain pieces considered too fragile to withstand the rigors of travel be withdrawn.

scourge Earlier this century,breakthroughs in antibiotics inspired similarly confident predictions that the ancient scourges (infectious diseases) would soon be eradicated． shackles As for Ted Turner,the merger liberates his lofty ambition from the shackles of cash-strapped circumstance.

spin-off The film,which links Michael Jordan with Bugs Bunny,Daffy Duck and the rest of the Looney Tunes stable,has generated more than 200 spin-off items that Warner is hoping will eventually pull＄1 billion.