Word: area
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Western Europe pursues the promise of a more prosperous and safer era, the recent past seems impossibly remote. Only a few years ago, the area's decline seemed assured. Euro-Communists loomed large, Spain's infant democracy was threatened by a military coup, and terrorists operated so boldly that a former Italian Prime Minister was kidnaped and murdered. West Europeans seemed trapped in a twilight zone of economic entropy and declining international influence. After the deep OPEC-induced recession that ushered in the 1980s, millions of workers remained sidelined, victims of an affliction dubbed Eurosclerosis -- a hardening of the business...
Predictions of Western Europe's demise, however, proved to be premature. The U.S. recovery and appetite for imports helped spur the Continent's economies. But self-help played a major role as well. With one eye on the impact of the Reagan Revolution in the U.S., the area's governments reduced taxes, scissored red tape and encouraged investment. A new breed of hard-driving Euroentrepreneurs has emerged, bent not only on streamlining the Continent's industries but also on spearheading a European invasion of corporate America. Last year British raiders alone spent $32 billion on U.S. companies, compared with...
...common market, but although member states dismantled intra-Community tariff barriers, they retained a bewildering barrage of regulations to restrict trade and curb competition. Although Western Europe has no immediate plans to create a common currency, E.C. countries have already made significant progress toward their goal of unstitching the area's patchwork quilt of protected national markets...
...time, and then the fires will reach a peak. Last year the smoke grew so thick that Porto Velho, the capital of the state of Rondonia, was forced to close its airport for days at a time. An estimated 12,350 sq. mi. of Brazilian rain forest -- an area larger than Belgium -- was reduced to ashes. Anticipating another conflagration this year, scientists, environmentalists and TV crews have journeyed to Porto Velho to marvel and despair at the immolation of these ancient forests...
...passions behind the fight are easy to understand for anyone who has seen the almost unimaginable sweep of the Amazon basin. The river and forest system covers 2.7 million sq. mi. (almost 90% of the area of the contiguous U.S.) and stretches into eight countries besides Brazil, including Venezuela to the north, Peru to the west and Bolivia to the south. An adventurous monkey could climb into the jungle canopy in the foothills of the Andes and swing through 2,000 miles of continuous 200-ft.-high forest before reaching the Atlantic coast. The river itself, fed by more than...