Word: coasting
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Last week British authorities finally came forward with plans to resettle the remaining populace. The destroyer H.M.S. Liverpool moved into position off the north coast in case of an emergency evacuation. Local officials began registering people for a voluntary-relocation program that would take them to neighboring islands, where they would be put up in hotel rooms. London has agreed to pay passage to England for those wishing to resettle there...
David Dinkins was the first black mayor of New York City (1990-94); Rudolph Giuliani, the current mayor, rode to office on a law-and-order, pro-police platform, and is expected to coast to re-election in large part because of a precipitous 54% drop in serious crime during his time in office. Suddenly, he was faced with the flip side--an apparently horrific instance of police brutality that punctuated three years of complaints by blacks and Hispanics that police abusiveness was out of control. It was not the kind of endorsement Giuliani, usually outspoken in his support...
Cadres carrying red flags are still mobilizing workers, children and the military, marching them with buckets--for nothing. People are desperately scrounging for wild grasses, roots, bark--anything to supplement government rations as low as 12 spoonfuls of grain a day. In one village on the eastern coast, a rice-processing mill has no rice, so it is making noodles from seaweed. Every tractor, truck, wagon and ox-cart has been mobilized to distribute food aid as it comes in. Still, the pain is spreading across this country of 24 million as unremitting hunger stalks the land...
Until recently, most weather scientists paid scant attention to the periodic episodes of warm water that for countless centuries have appeared off the coast of Peru. They seemed to be a local event, one that affected mainly fish--in particular, Peru's lucrative anchovy fishery--and seabirds. Not until the early 1970s, when that fishery's collapse was accompanied by drought and crop failures around the world, did the global reach of El Nino become clear. However, it took the disastrous weather of 1982-83 to convince scientists and policymakers that the tropical Pacific merited close watching...
...visualize how the ENSO cycle works, think of the Pacific Ocean as a big bathtub, with a fan stirring up air representing the trade winds. In the ENSO cycle's neutral or cold phase, these winds blow from east to west, pushing water away from the South American coast, so that the ocean's surface is a couple of feet lower off Peru than it is off Indonesia. The difference, although seemingly small, has important consequences: to replace the water that the winds have swept away, cold, nutrient-rich water from the depths wells up, and so Peru's waters...