Mr Obama says the bid to claim credit for the failed attack was "an indication of how weakened he is".Yet some of the direst worries about al-Qaeda have resurfaced.
The meeting in Turkey of the so-called Friends of Syria group is taking place against a backdrop of worsening violence in the two-year-old civil war, dire new worries about how to care for millions of displaced Syrians, and further signs of Islamist radicalization in the insurgency as well as intransigence by President Bashar al-Assad.
"The pelicans are in dire trouble," said Doug Inkley, a senior scientist with the National Wildlife Federation, who worried that the oil spill could put an end to the bird's recovery in Louisiana.
Prominent voices are sounding dire warnings, worried that a gradual return to normalcy could undermine the political will needed to control deficit spending and prevent a disastrous long-term decline of the world's primary reserve currency.
The UNICEF Representative to Iraq, Mr. Carel de Rooy, said that the humanitarian picture being flashed across television screens is stark, dire and worrying.
Without it the prospects for employment and economic activity in many parts of the country will be dire – and, as worrying, by the end of the decade our growing international debts will replace our public debt as the No 1 economic problem.
But considering all the dire things to worry about with this out-of-control epidemic in West Africa, that mutation concern is not "something I would put at the very top of the radar screen," said Fauci, head of NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Executives at Kirch, which is in dire financial straits, are worried now about a possible takeover attempt by the News Corporation.
But the economic situation in the country is so dire that many researchers worry the money will not arrive in time, or in sufficient quantity, to save CSIC from looming bankruptcy.
They spend little time worrying about dire consequences until there is definitive information.
