Word: direness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Pentagon clumsily leaked word of its plan to station an aircraft-carrier task force in international waters off Colombia's Caribbean coast to track suspected drug- smuggling aircraft. Though U.S. officials insist that Barco had privately approved the plan, the ill-timed disclosure aroused the Colombian press to dire warnings of a "yanqui blockade." The Bush Administration promptly backed down and assured Barco that no U.S. warships would be deployed until Bogota agrees...
Hurt by the losses of captain John Mee and Nicholas Arena, the men seemed to be in dire straits in the distance events. But just as Rainey had stepped to the forefront for the women, Timothy Harte turned in some heroics of his own against a strong field of milers. Harte edged a Brown runner at the tape to win with a time of 4:14.25, only three tenths of a second ahead of the second-place finisher...
...million people, more than four times the number wiped out by the great famine of 1984-85, may starve this year if food relief is not provided -- and soon. In Sudan, where as many as a quarter of a million people died of hunger in 1987-88, the most dire estimates suggest that 3 million could suffer the same fate by the middle of this decade. Once again the world may see those sickening images: skeletal children too weak to swat away the flies that swarm around their eyes; old people slumped against herding sticks, too weary to take another...
...sobering task of political, economic and moral reconstruction. -- Violence in the south and separatism in the north make nationalism one of Moscow's most pressing problems. -- An Iranian tanker spills nearly twice as much oil as the Exxon Valdez, but the immediate impact on the environment is less dire than that of the Alaska mishap...