The last two years have seen an astonishing increase in the number of American parents wishing to employ Mandarin-speaking nannies, difficult to find here and even harder to obtain from China.

They had proposed astonishing increases of 24.3 per cent for the judiciary and 19.4 per cent for senior civil servants.

Regulatory filings also reveal the bank's chief executive Lloyd Blankfein is in line for an astonishing 233% increase in his basic pay in 2011, which rises from $600,000 to $2m.

One of the key factors in this process has been an astonishing increase in the rate of discovery of new fossils.

This, in theory of the story and in today's world, would produce an astonishing net increase in childbirth, if young couples were to begin having children during an early relationship.

This was at a time that there was an "astonishing increase in the numbers of great UK rap records being released".

The Manx Linen Company is my fic- tional explanation for this astonishing increase.

That's true even though Israeli science has produced an astonishing 12-fold increase in agricultural production since 1948 with only a slight increase in water use.

They all reflect the astonishing increase in global interdependence.

It was his first trial of the new device, and while he was prepared for increased speed he was not prepared for such an astonishing increase.