Word: breakthrough
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Today many Soviet weapons are reasonable facsimiles if not exact duplicates of American ones. The Soviet AWACS and space shuttles are carbon copies of earlier U.S. models. The Boeing short takeoff and landing (STOL) prototype, a breakthrough aerodynamic design, miraculously appeared just 16 months later as the Soviet AN-72. The SU-15 fighter that shot down the Korean Air Line's Flight 007 two years ago did so with a missile guidance system designed in the U.S. The Soviets do not even attempt to create their own computers anymore: the Kremlin's mainframe RIAD computer...
...that could have been spent exploiting Reagan's re-election momentum. Congress handcuffed the President on aid to the contras in Nicaragua, MX missile deployment and his defense buildup. Reagan's visit to a German military cemetery in Bitburg raised a storm of criticism at home and abroad. No breakthrough on arms control is in sight, and a summit meeting with Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev seems to be drifting into limbo. Tax reform, says former Democratic National Chairman Robert Strauss, "is the best thing Ronald Reagan has going...
Another candidate for bomb-in-the-basement status, South Africa, announced in 1970 that it had developed a new process for uranium enrichment. Since then the government in Pretoria has fiercely protected its putative breakthrough from virtually all curious foreign eyes. In 1977 the Soviet Union, apparently acting on evidence received from one of its spy satellites, notified the U.S. of an installation in South Africa's Kalahari Desert that resembled a nuclear test site under construction. Washington used one of its own satellites to inspect further. Four months later, under pressure from the U.S., South Africa stopped work...
...work would be sung in Sanskrit, a mellifluous, vowel-rich language, to a text drawn from the Bhagavad-Gita. As his subject he chose Mohandas Gandhi's early years in South Africa, during which Gandhi developed his philosophy of nonviolent resistance. If the elemental Einstein was Glass's breakthrough, the gentle, serene Satyagraha was the first major work of his mature style. By poignantly transforming a flute line from the second scene into Gandhi's eloquent apostrophe to freedom at the end, Glass created one of the most powerful moments in modern opera. The melody is simplicity itself -- a scale...
...economists were optimistic that Congress and the White House are making a serious start toward resolving the budget dilemma. "I think we are getting closer and closer to a real breakthrough on bringing the deficit down," said Harvard Professor Martin Feldstein, who served for two years as President Reagan's chief economic adviser. The board was particularly encouraged by the resolution passed three weeks ago in the Republican-controlled Senate, which was designed to trim $56 billion from the 1986 budget, leaving a deficit of $171 billion. The plan would, among other things, eliminate the 1986 cost of living increase...