Word: blot
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...also describe the effects of climatic phenomena that have never been seen. In 1983 a group of scientists that included Cornell's Carl Sagan calculated what would happen if the U.S. and the Soviet Union fought a nuclear war. Their conclusion: the dust and smoke from burning cities would blot out enough sunlight to plunge the land into a "nuclear winter" that would devastate crops and lead to widespread starvation...
...concern for the sacrifices made by servicemen in the estimated 115,000-member Soviet force occupying Afghanistan. One letter writer from Volgograd wondered why tombstones of Soviet soldiers make no mention of service in Afghanistan. "The war is still going," she wrote, "and we are already trying to blot it from our memories...
Disclosures of hypocrisy and moral laxity infect leadership from Washington to Wall Street, tainting even television evangelists and the Semper Fi U. S. Marines. Do the transgressions represent a general shunning of values that Americans have always held dear, or are they merely a temporary blot brought about by the mindless materialism of the '80s? See ETHICS...
...Wedtech scandal is a blot on the minority set-aside program, which conservatives have criticized for being ineffective and poorly administered. Many of those who support the program agree that it needs reforming. Massachusetts Congressman Nicholas Mavroules, a member of the House Small Business Committee, has introduced legislation that would increase the penalties against minority front companies and require set-aside contractors to report to the Inspector General on their use of consultants. Mavroules wants to reform the set-aside, not eliminate it. Says he: "I believe the program is still very much needed to encourage the growth of fledgling...
Vermont's reputation for prim Yankee propriety extends to its state government, traditionally one of the cleanest in the country. But a blot has formed on the pristine Green Mountain State record, in, of all places, its supreme court. Last month Vermont's judicial-conduct board accused three of five high-court justices -- Thomas Hayes, 60, William Hill, 69, and Ernest Gibson III, 59 -- of numerous violations of judicial ethics growing out of their allegedly improper efforts to help a lower-court colleague under investigation. Charges against a majority of a supreme court are hardly everyday occurrences, and the move...