Then, as the number of drunken driving deaths across the country continued to rise, the stakes for coverage got even higher.
As U.S. government officials continue to pressure China to allow the value of its currency to rise, the stakes of the debate may have become overblown.
Shares of Ping An rose above the stake sale price on Wednesday.
In an unusually long and impassioned speech here that reflected the rising political stakes of the fight, the president insisted that the gravest danger to federal surpluses was increased spending by Congress, and he cast himself as the vigilant guardian against that.
In a sign of the rising political stakes, Mr. Bush is scheduled to speak about the budget outlook in Missouri on Tuesday.
This analysis, in August, about Chinese activists being arrested by the Japanese Coast Guard for planting flags on one of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, was just one of many seeking to explain a host of Asian territorial disputes, and the rising stakes.
In outlining the recommendations, John B. King Jr., the state education commissioner, and Valerie Grey, the executive deputy commissioner, wrote in a memorandum to the Board of Regents that not enough was being done to detect and deter cheating by teachers and principals, given the rising stakes of tests.
"Rising strategic stakes have heightened the regional and wider international competition," she wrote in a new assessment.
These rising stakes are behind the state's push for better test security, as is an acknowledgment by state officials that they have not done enough to detect or prevent cheating.
Among the stocks on the move on Wednesday, Yahoo surged $2.78, or 10.3 percent, to $29.66, as investors were encouraged by the rising value of the company's stake in Alibaba, the fast-growing Chinese e-commerce company.
