The efficacy of these strategies is open to question; in the case of Waco, they were adopted against the advice of negotiators, and may only have hardened the cult's resolve.
The question in the case of the potential merger, said Ms. Obst, is: "Do we have fewer buyers or more buyers?
Mr. Darby's letter answered lingering questions in the case of the two Texas men, David McKay and Bradley Crowder, both also from Austin.
The key question in the case of coconut water is whether farmers are benefiting from the conversion of a waste by-product into a highly profitable beverage.
One of the many questions in the case of Raymond Davis — who shot two men dead in the streets of Lahore, Pakistan — was who, exactly, he worked for; he was, reportedly, some sort of contractor working for or with the C.I.A.
On Sept. 4, the Louisiana Supreme Court took on this question in the case of Darryl Tate, who was 17 when he held up two men and killed one of them in 1981.
A central question in the case of Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations, to be argued Tuesday, is whether every permutation of the word evokes sex and thus runs afoul of indecency regulations, which prohibit the broadcasting of material that "depicts or describes sexual or excretory activities or organs".
Answering questions in the case of a priest accused of repeatedly molesting boys, Cardinal Bernard F. Law acknowledged in a deposition today that he had read a letter from 1985 that complained that the priest was advocating sex between men and boys, two plaintiffs and a lawyer who attended the deposition said.
