Word: beset
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...first time, Moscow publicly acknowledged that all was not well. Pravda admitted on its front page that Kabul was beset by "unrest" and "insurgency." In the frankest admission of all, the official news agency TASS indicated that the Karmal government was in disfavor with a large part of the population. Another surprising admission was attributed by the Italian magazine Panorama to a Soviet general identified as Mikhail Kirian. He publicly conceded that "in the Afghan army, there have been deser tions," and that "the Afghans will have to work hard to put the army in order...
...preparing his State of the Union speech, Carter followed his normal practice of asking aides for suggestions, then meeting with them individually and in groups to discuss their ideas. It quickly became apparent that even though he was beset by inflation and other economic problems at home, he wanted the speech to be devoted mostly to foreign policy and that he wanted to take a stronger approach to Moscow than had previously been favored by the State Department...
Pesticides and herbicides were produced by researchers in companies, universities and the Government to conquer the plagues of locusts and other insects that regularly beset grain crops. Bug-and disease-resistant seeds were developed. As a result, U.S. corn country has not suffered a severe blight since 1970. During the past decade petrochemical fertilizers again increased harvests...
Happy or not, the crackpots soon unleashed the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, the atomic bomb. Ever since, Los Alamos, like Bethlehem in Judea, has been a place difficult to visit in a neutral frame of mind. Los Alamos is part rich, overachieving exurb beset by worldly goods and ills familiar all over the U.S., but raised to the nth power; part lonely company town. But, above all, it is an intellectual hothouse not quite like any other...
...agency. To a considerable extent, that task has been accomplished by Thomas Powers, a former U.P.I, reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1971 for his coverage of the radical bomber Diana Oughton. With near clinical detachment, Powers has produced a remarkably realistic portrait of American intelligence beset by bureaucratic rivalries, personality clashes and presidential caprice...