Word: counts
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Aquitaine, France's state-owned petroleum company, spent more than $150 million for research and development on the equipment in the 1970s. Yet no oil was ever found. In fact, there is no evidence that ' the expensive devices worked at all. A Belgian count who sold them to Elf has vanished, along with the money. As a result, the leftist government of President Francois Mitterrand is accusing its center-right predecessor of lying and incompetence, an investigation has been launched, and the French public is savoring the oddest political scandal in years...
...mess evidently began in 1968, when Aldo Bonassoli, a telephone-company electrician in Ventimiglia, Italy, convinced Count Alain de Villegas, a wealthy private investor, that he could develop a technique for discovering oil from the air. A French intelligence agent learned of the project, and the Giscard government decided that it might be useful for detecting submarines. Villegas signed the first of a number of contracts with Elf-Aquitaine, and payments were made into secret Swiss bank accounts...
...present government came to power through lies. It is trying to maintain itself by lies." Disdaining a reply, Mitterrand has preferred, as the pro-government daily Le Monde put it, "to preserve his virginity in this affair while encouraging the government to move to the front with it." Meanwhile, Count de Villegas's chateau outside Brussels was burglarized last week, and his files were rifled by what Belgian police describe as "professionals." In Ventimiglia, Italian authorities offered police protection to would-be inventor Bonassoli after noticing unknown people around his house. Bonassoli, who left Villegas's employ...
Well, innocence may be catching up with America, because the U.S. is certainly gaining on the cold world. The team of 120 athletes headed for Sarajevo is flush with champions, and not only skaters this time, although there is a bumper haul of those, but skiers too. Count them, seven current or recent world titleholders: Alpine Skiers Phil Mahre, Steve Mahre and Tamara McKinney, Figure Skaters Scott Hamilton, Rosalynn Sumners and Elaine Zayak, and Nordic Cross-Country Skier Bill Koch. Once the American public finds out that there is also a Nordic combined event and that it involves...
...those crates are getting pretty old. To this enterprise, the U.S.O.C. chips in about $100,000 annually, and Corporate Sponsor Lederle Laboratories helps somewhat. But the equipment afforded is far from the best on the mountain. Not just holding down the bobsleds, but holding them down for the count, those good old boys from Saranac Lake, Plattsburgh and Keene Valley in upstate New York are still just about the best bobsledders in the Adirondacks and not quite the worst in the world...