1. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) had long been expected to announce a reduction in output to bolster sagging oil prices, but officials of the organization just recently announced that the group will pare daily production by 1.5 million barrels by the beginning of next year, but only if non-0PEC nations, including Norway, Mexico, and Russia, were to trim output by a total of 500,000 barrels a day.

2. Not trusting themselves to choose wisely among the wide array of investment opportunities on the market, stockbrokers are helping many people who turn to them to buy stocks that could be easily bought directly.

3. There are several ways to build solid walls using just mud or clay, but the most extensively used method has been the forming of bricks out of mud or clay, and, after some preliminary air drying or sun drying, they are laid in the wall in mud mortar.

4. A surge in new home sales and a drop in weekly unemployment claims suggest that the economy might not be as weak as some analysts previously thought.

5.  Retail sales rose 0.8 of 1 percent in August, intensifying expectations that personal spending in the July-September quarter more than doubled that of the 1.4 percent growth rate in personal spending for the previous quarter.

6.  ln the early part of the twentieth century, many vacationers found that driving automobiles and sleeping in tents allowed them to enjoy nature close at hand and tour at their own pace, with none of the restrictions of passenger trains and railroad timetables or with the formalities, expenses, and impersonality of hotels.

7. Over the next few years, increasing demands on the Chattahoochee River, which flows into the Apalachicola River, could alter the saline content of Apalachicola Bay, which would rob the oysters there of their flavor, and to make them decrease in size, less distinctive, and less in demand.

8. Elizabeth Barber, the author of both Prehistoric Textiles, a comprehensive work on cloth in the early cultures of the Mediterranean, and also of Women’s Work, a more general account of early cloth manufacture, is an expert authority on textiles in ancient societies.

9. Digging in sediments in northern China, evidence has been gathered by scientists suggesting that complex life-forms emerged much earlier than they had previously thought.

10. Employing many different techniques throughout his career, Michelangelo produced a great variety of art works, including paintings, for example, in the Sistine Chapel, to sculpture, for example, the statue of David.