Word: coasting
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...Blanchon examined fossil coral reefs about 40 miles south of Cancún on the east coast of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. (The fossils had been exposed during the construction of a new seaside resort.) Working with his co-authors at Germany's Leibniz Institute of Marine Science, Blanchon calculated the age of the samples by measuring isotopes of thorium in the fossils, a process similar to carbon-dating. The patterns of the fossils indicated points where the coral died when the seas rose too fast for the organisms to adapt; each time the seas stabilized, the corals grew back...
...three Navy SEAL snipers who killed the pirates off the coast of Somalia last weekend were lucky the buccaneers were gullible enough to allow their lifeboat to be towed farther out to sea by the U.S.S. Bainbridge. The shortened towline turned what could have been a trio of difficult shots across hundreds of yards of ocean into relatively easy 30-yd. pops. It's a safe bet future pirates won't be so naive. But the Pentagon is drawing up a project to make it easier to hit targets at much longer distances: a super-sniper rifle called the EXACTO...
...Obama took a tough stance on Monday, saying, "I want to be very clear that we are resolved to halt the rise of piracy in that region." But Gates made it clear that the real solution isn't on the high seas. Instead, it's back along the Somali coast in the impoverished villages and towns that the pirates call home. "As long as you've got this incredible number of poor people and the risks are relatively small," he said, "there's really no way in my view to control it unless you get something on land that begins...
...Even if the Pentagon had the stomach for this kind of fight, the confused command structure for the region would make it hard to succeed. You might think, after all, that Africom would be front and center in battling the piracy now rampant off Somalia's coast. But in fact Africom deals only with African territory, and not the seas surrounding it. Those are monitored by U.S. Central Command, also responsible for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This disconnect - Centcom if by sea, Africom if by land - highlights the challenge facing the Pentagon as it tries to grapple with...
...brigands feeling stung after getting their way for so long. The pirates have had uninterrupted rule of Somalia's seas for several months, and a spate of recent attacks suggests they are broadening their range to well beyond the Gulf of Aden to several hundred miles off the Somali coast. They once portrayed themselves as a coast guard for a country that has no government, and said they were striking back against fishing boats that illegally fished and dumped toxic waste in their waters. But what may have started as a seed of retaliation has bloomed into a full-blown...