Word: airing
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...Security Agency (NSA), which collects the vast bulk of chatter for this country, has no shortage of sophisticated equipment and no legal obstacles when it listens to chatter abroad. What it does have a problem with is making sense of the sea of chatter it sucks out of the air and the world's fiber-optic cables. The risk of misinterpretation or missing a vital piece of information is enormous. (See the top 10 Secret Service code names...
...down every so often with a commercially available Bearcat scanner and listen to random conversations. It was mostly people griping about the shortage of bread or the price of gasoline. I improved my Arabic but little more. Once, however, something very intriguing came up on the air: the movement of tanks out of barracks. I was elated, jumping to the conclusion that a coup d'état was in the offing - and I'd be the one to break the news to Washington. As it turned out, the tanks were getting ready for a military parade...
...organizers - gathered in the Spirit of Justice Park near the Capitol, bystanders were greeted with the surreal sight of a global-warming protest occurring in the middle of a freak March snowstorm. They chanted slogans like "Who is hot in here / There's too much carbon in the air" while huddling against the windchill. The greatest risk to the protesters wasn't aggressive cops - the D.C. police, just as chilled as the activists, had little interest in confrontation - but frostbite from the hours of marching and standing in the cold. "It's icy out there, so be careful," organizer Joshua...
...travelers are fast discovering this city. During the day, the temperature hovers at an eternal 88°F, and the heat rises languidly off the cobblestone streets. Like the locals, you can retreat into the cool, moist refuges of the ancient stone homes, most with walls so thick that air-conditioning becomes redundant. One of my favorite places to chill: Getsemani, the tiny European-style section of the Old Town - once the poor neighborhood just across the moat but now the cool Greenwich Village-style area of the city. Getting around the Old Town is a cinch; cabs cost about...
Meeting in Brussels for a long Sunday lunch, European Union leaders were supposed to clear the air after weeks of jibes, sneers and slurs over who is to blame for the economic crisis. But after a three-hour meal of goat cheese, beef stew and apple crumble, they emerged as ratty as ever, barely concealing their long-standing gripes and graphically revealing how far the E.U. is from any coordinated response to the downturn...