Word: aridity
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...interviewer asked Rudd. "The economy is basic to everything," he replied. Is Labor a party of the left? "It's all about an education revolution," Rudd said. But is Labor a party of the left? It is, Rudd conceded, "a part of progressive politics." "I'm not interested in arid debates about left, right, center, up, down," explained the Anglican Rudd, who'd converted from Catholicism but had not yet, he said, "resigned from Rome." "As a Christian," he said, "I don't believe denomination is really that relevant...
...laid plans are no match for the fierce force of nature. In this case, the foe was not just fire, but its ally, wind, specifically the type known in Southern California as a Santa Ana, which blows hot and hard from the desert, often in October, when the dry, arid region is at its most vulnerable for wildfires. The effect is analogous to a match striking sandpaper. The cause of most of this week's fires are unknown, although a downed power line may be responsible for at least one. Winds up to 70 miles an hour blew over...
...last year, the British army deployed 3,300 soldiers to Afghanistan's Helmand province - an arid, mostly desert region in the country's southwest. Tasked to provide security for ongoing NATO reconstruction and humanitarian efforts, they expected little combat. But within weeks the troops were engaged in daily battles with the Taliban and, by the end of their tour in October 2006, had fired 480,000 rounds of ammunition, fought in nearly 500 skirmishes and mourned the loss of 15 comrades...
...great human icons of the past 100 years, whose remarkable deeds seemed inextricably connected to her closeness to God and who was routinely observed in silent and seemingly peaceful prayer by her associates as well as the television camera, was living out a very different spiritual reality privately, an arid landscape from which the deity had disappeared...
...midafternoon on a blistering June Saturday in Yusufia, just south of Baghdad. The abandoned school was stifling, though more tolerable than the dusty, sun-addled main street of town, which we'd just walked along - the general on an arid grip-and-grin tour, offering Salaam aleikum, habibi! greetings to the few Iraqis willing to brave the midday heat. Now Petraeus moved from classroom to classroom, cloaked in heavy body armor, sweat trickling down the side of his face. Each room was packed with nonsmiling Iraqi men in deep squat - 500 in all. Petraeus was exhilarated. They were different from...