Word: backdrop
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Good question, indeed. The dilemma of how best to avoid such horror was discussed passionately in homes, classrooms and church basements from coast to coast last week after an astonishing 100 million Americans watched ABC's version of the nukemare.* Against the tense backdrop of U.S. missile deployments in Western Europe and the Soviet walkout at the Geneva arms talks, The Day After sharpened the debate between opponents and supporters of the Reagan Administration's weapons policies. On a wider, more superficial level, the movie brought home the terror of nuclear devastation to millions of Americans too young...
...showdown in Tripoli was played out against a backdrop of rising tensions. Two U.S. aircraft carriers, the Independence and the Kennedy, joined the Eisenhower off the coast of Lebanon last week. Israel, meanwhile, announced a mobilization drill of its reservists; the last time a public call to duty occurred was in 1978. Both countries described their actions as routine, but the activity fed speculation about possible retaliation for the suicidal attacks against the U.S. Marine compound in Beirut* and an Israeli military base in Tyre. In response, Syrian President Hafez Assad placed his country's armed forces on alert...
...recent policy change requires that filming on the Harvard campus be for a production that is educational or requires Harvard as a backdrop to be successful artistically...
YEAGER is the sobering backdrop to all the fanfare that lionizes Glenn and his crew. He was the first man to break the barrier, a feat he pulled in 1947, and he continues to push technology to the limit, returning to the cockpit to each time his speed record is broken. The public doesn't care about Yeager. (A military officer squelched initial publicity of the sound barrier accomplishment for "security reasons.") And, Yeager doesn't care about having a public. He just wants challenge...
...Institute for Foreign Affairs put it, the tone of Andropov's reply seemed "to suggest the bad temper of Khrushchev at the beginning of the '60s, and that of course brings memories of the Berlin crisis, the Cuban missile crisis and all the rest." Against that gloomy backdrop, it was tempting last week to conclude that as relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated, the Ad- ministration was playing its China card, cozying up to the world's most populous nation and the U.S.S.R.'s other main rival. But summit meetings are not arranged in a week...