Word: decaying
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...once busy and prosperous port (pop. 1.2 million in 1980) on the Shatt al Arab waterway formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. After Iraq's invasion in September 1980, Iranian artillery frequently shelled the city; ever since, Basra has been in a state of decay, its population reduced to 1 million, its trade cut to almost nothing. Two weeks ago, Iranian artillery attacks against the town resumed and doctors at the Basra city hospital once again were working around the clock. Remaining residents stayed indoors, barricading themselves as best they could behind sandbags. The streets were...
...completed in 1937, however, the league was so moribund that Geneva was sometimes ( referred to as the City of Lost Causes. (This experience inspired C. Northcote Parkinson to include in Parkinson's Law the thesis that the building of a new headquarters is invariably a symptom of institutional decay.) Very little remains of the old dream, except perhaps the peacocks still strolling serenely in the gardens that surround the palais...
...establish themselves in train and bus terminals and residential areas that are otherwise generally safe. In his 1975 book, Thinking About Crime, Harvard Professor James Q. Wilson says that the acceptance of vagrants, panhandlers and sleeping drunks on the sidewalk is the traditional sign that the cycle of urban decay is under way: informal controls break down, muggers and burglars move in, and stable families begin to move out. "Arresting a single drunk or a single vagrant who has harmed no identifiable person seems unjust, and in a sense it is," writes Wilson. "But failing to do anything about...
...nurses worked frantically to ease their misery. As the hospitals filled, patients gathered in the corridors or on the grounds outside; side by side, babies and children thrashed around, unable to breathe. Thousands of animals were also killed by the gas. As the days passed, a sickly stench of decay arose from the bloated carcasses of water buffalo, cattle and dogs that clogged the city's streets. Finally, the army removed them with cranes. But as long as animal and human corpses decomposed in the open air, the threat of contamination increased, and with it the specter of cholera. Meanwhile...
...conical thatched roof, is known as zawya. In the Afar language, that means the house of the dead. Although it is not long after dawn, 26 bodies have already been wrapped in filthy burlap shrouds on the earthen floor. The air is sickly sweet with the smell of decay. Inside, in accordance with Muslim custom, Hussein Yussuf is tenderly washing the shriveled body of a three-year-old boy. "This is the first water this child has had for a long, long time," says the 60-year-old man. In the past four weeks, Yussuf, known as Jenaza-atabi (Cleaner...