Word: blight
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...maladies of the Mezzogiorno are the maladies of Italy. It's just a question of degree: what is gray in Italy is black in the south." Indeed, entrenched nationwide ills like tax evasion, cumbersome bureaucracy and a self-serving political class are of a piece with the south's blight - crime and blatant corruption. Neither the public nor private sectors have been modernized in Italy, as they have been elsewhere in Europe, explains Fabrizio Barca, a senior Italian Economy Ministry official. "The north has found ways to compensate for this, and can be competitive in spite of the state...
From a fire-gutted shell across from a pretty park on the north side of town to a mangy wreck near the airport where a collection of cats and dogs were found chained together in the yard, abandoned residences are putting a blight on all types of neighborhoods. "We get about six to ten calls a day on vacant homes," says police officer John McGill, who stresses that this isn't just a problem in the poorer parts of town...
...still save seeds today, mostly in national seed banks that often specialize in native crops: pistachios in Iran, rice in the Philippines. When a disaster like the Irish potato blight of the 1840s hits, scientists can search the seed bank for an old variety that might prove resistant. Since pests and pathogens are constantly evolving, a well-stocked seed bank "is our best line of defense," says Geoff Hawtin, director-general of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia...
...m.b.d., but even OPEC says Venezuela's output is 2.4 m.b.d. PDVSA's exploration and production vice president, Luis Vierma, warned last July of an "operational emergency" because of a lack of drilling rigs. In recent years, there has been a troubling string of accidents; and oil corruption, the blight that Chávez vowed to eradicate, became an issue this year when Vierma was investigated--but not charged--for handing lucrative contracts to rig operators who had no experience...
...Yours! or Till Divorce Do Us Part†served up a fall Farcefest full of philandering, French-isms, foppishness, and fervor. This year’s on-stage fracas was as conflicted as its title, comically portraying the blurred line between marital bliss and marital blight. Unfortunately, in some parts of the performance, the line between “great†and “grating†was just as blurred...