But Mr. Zakaria's career suffered an abrupt setback recently after bloggers discovered that his column of Aug. 20 for Time magazine had passages lifted almost entirely from an article by the historian Jill Lepore that appeared in The New Yorker in April.
The expropriation of Transportadora de Electricidad, or T.D.E., which operates a large part of Bolivia's national electricity grid, is another abrupt setback for Spanish companies in Latin America, just weeks after President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina announced that her government would take back majority control of YPF, an oil company, from Repsol, its Spanish parent.
Some people lose their house or their boat to abrupt setbacks: illness, job loss, divorce.
Such an abrupt reversal smacks of desperation.
His abrupt withdrawal is an unexpected setback for Mr Obama, who has enjoyed remarkably smooth transition to power.
Two years ago, the dream of having elected mayors running all of England's biggest cities suffered an abrupt and, some might say, devastating setback.
In spite of recent setbacks like withdrawn merger offer, abrupt executive departures and a delay in quarterly reporting due to the restating of past finances, Leap still managed to beat its own prediction for new customer growth in the fourth quarter of 2007.
Goodwin's abrupt departure from the PBS show is a setback, but she can take comfort from the fact that U.S. News treated her as a legitimate pundit this week by quoting her prominently about Lyndon Johnson.
Purkayastha describes a childhood filled with the thrills and setbacks of the startup life style, including an abrupt move, in his teens, from Texas to Arkansas, in order to downsize.
The probe marks the latest setback for the bank in a growing scandal that led to the abrupt retirement of its chief executive officer, compensation clawbacks, lost business and damage to its reputation.
It was given setbacks "so the increased height from the shorter buildings to the new one is gradual rather than abrupt, and clad in two-tone beige and brown bricks to break up the scale," he said.
