I had been pursuing refunds through our travel agent since our aborted cruise, but when the line defaulted, those prospects evaporated.

But with his highly publicized troubles, his prospects for the Federal post have all but evaporated.

Valentine said, the prospect of sleep evaporating like a desert mirage.

But the prospect of such an order, while postponed, has not evaporated entirely.

The prospects for a quick deal evaporated by mid-July, as lawmakers realized how hard it would be to find a compromise.

Since then, the prospects for any military involvement by NATO in the Bosnian war have evaporated, and the latest Serbian flights predictably prompted no response.

But that optimistic prospect had actually evaporated, sometime during those weeks, when auditors from Andersen discovered a mistake they had made, more than a year earlier, in Enron's books.

Last year, the New York City Opera talked briefly and tentatively about moving to the New Amsterdam, but that prospect quickly evaporated.

And as the nuclear issue has heated up, prospects for substantial increases in Western investment have virtually evaporated.

"These documents show that the prospects of an early deal to end the hunger strike evaporated over that July weekend," he said.