Word: desertion
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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More than a third of the earth's land mass is desert or desert-like, and one put of seven people-some 630 million-dwell in these parched regions. In the past, they have been able to scratch out a livelihood-barely. Now, largely through man's own folly, their fragile existence is threatened by a deadly disease of the land called, awkwardly but accurately, "desertification...
...only half a century, an estimated 251,000 sq. mi. (650,000 sq. km.) of farming and grazing land has been swallowed up by the Sahara along that great desert's southern fringe. In one part of India's Rajasthan region, often called the dustiest place in the world, sand cover has increased by about 8% in only 18 years. In the U.S., so much once fertile farm land has been abandoned for lack of water along Interstate 10 between Tucson and Phoenix that dust storms now often sweep the highway...
...life. Their families were stangers. They set up cots next to their desks so that they could be within steps of the hot-line messages that dropped into the Situation Room. Not only did Brzezinski defy tradition by going off to Maine's Mount Desert Island for a week, but when his boss was at Camp David, he played tennis on the White House court in the middle of the afternoon. Returning to his office, he sat down at his desk in his tennis gear. He buzzed for the White House photographer. When the cameraman arrived, Brzezinski shouldered...
...Durrell is an endlessly inventive entertainer to bring along on a trip. Among his companions: Deeds, a former Indian army officer and Desert Rat, who speaks a jargon of 1940 Cairo; and the Anglican bishop, who has developed Doubts-"an evident Pauline-type neurosis which is almost endemic in the Church of England, and usually comes from reading Lady Chatterley's Lover in paperback." There is also the insufferable Bed-does, a cashiered prep school teacher obscurely on the lam, who mutters cracks about Alcibiades being a queer. A French couple reminds Durrell of "very cheap microscopes...
...Vehicle) 101 cut loose from the 747 mother ship and maneuvered safely to earth on its own. As NASA officials-and much of the nation via television-watched with ringers crossed, the shuttle, christened Enterprise after the spaceship in Star Trek, swooped in graceful arcs down through the clear desert air over Edwards Air Force Base in California. Then, as if both ship and crew had been doing it forever, it touched down perfectly and rolled to a stop on the 11-km.-long (7 miles) bed of Rogers Dry Lake...