Premier Chou En-lai told the congress that Communist China had "suffered from serious national calamities" for three consecutive years and that "considerable difficulties have occurred in the national economy".
Think in terms of a couple of weeks, not months, and don't travel too far away, so you can get back easily in case of serious (research) calamities.
The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, apologised for his party's "disastrous decision to go to war", calling it the most serious foreign policy calamity of the last 60 years.
Though Mr. Trachtenberg struggled with drug abuse and alcoholism, he says he undertook this difficult subject only after a friend died of breast cancer, which inspired him to ask some big, serious questions: How can calamities be explained, justified, ignored?
Ours was serious; theirs was an utter calamity.
That rings true to a reporter who over decades has watched governments and big business sidestep serious action to avert ecological calamity.
Rock bottom interest rates are a response to an economic calamity and a serious risk of deflation, not the period of above trend growth that the UK seems likely to experience over the next couple of years".
Nevertheless, having AIG's emblem on the wall doesn't exactly help Donohue make the case (as he did on Tuesday) that businesses face serious uncertainty -- and possible calamity -- if proposed reforms of the financial sector are implemented.
The flag may also be flown at half-mast when the Central People's Government advises the Chief Executive to do so, or when the Chief Executive considers it appropriate to do so, on occurrences of unfortunate events causing especially serious casualties, or when serious natural calamities have caused heavy casualties.
Now that the Wall Street wealthy have helped plunge the nation into economic calamity, they have an even more serious public relations problem.
