Word: affliction
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...democratization. The fact that Shagari could not retain power, even though he was overwhehningly re-elected last August, highlighted the pattern of failure that has plagued black Africa in the quarter-century since most of its nations became independent. The problems of Nigeria are, by and large, those that afflict the entire continent: abject poverty, rampant corruption, gross mismanagement, tribal enmity, uncontrolled population growth. If, in spite of its assets, Nigeria cannot break out of the vicious cycle of political instability and economic decline, the prospects for most of the continent's other countries appear all the bleaker (see following...
...sledlike contraption called a body-restraint system, and even endured electric shocks. Not surprisingly, the orbital guinea pigs complained that the tests were making them ill, although the torture had a medical purpose: to learn more about the nausea, headaches and general lethargy, known as space-adaptation syndrome, that afflict about half of all astronauts in their first day or two of weightlessness...
...most of this century, Isaac Bashevis Singer has spoken for a great and ancient minority: demons. In his fiction, they install themselves in mirrors to afflict women with vanity, render bridegrooms impotent on wedding nights, knock over Sabbath candles, spill poor men's dinners. "The demons," he says, "represent to me, in a sense, the ways of the world. Instead of saying this is the way things happen, I will say this is the way demons behave...
...order is maintained largely by 7,000 lightly armed civil and rural guardsmen. The country's 1982 per capita income of $1,164 is the second highest, after Panama, in Central America, and its society is largely lacking in the unhealthy extremes of wealth and poverty that afflict Guatemala and El Salvador...
...crewmates have spent most of their waking hours together. The fifth member of the group, Norman Thagard, 39, another mission specialist, was added only last December. As a physician, he will investigate a nagging difficulty of space travel: the initial queasiness, or "space adaptation syndrome," that seems to afflict about 50% of all astronauts in their first few days of weightlessness. The Challenger team members share an office at the Johnson Space Center. They practice endlessly in the shuttle cockpit simulator, rehearsing every conceivable facet of the mission, including possible emergencies. They have come to be as close-knit...