Word: ditches
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...East Germany it remained uncertain whether the Communist Party's last- ditch effort to fashion a new identity could save it from extinction. With the party's upper echelon disgraced, the taut discipline snapped down below. A half million of the 2.3 million cardholders have deserted the party in recent weeks, and last week middle-ranking members joined the opposition groups in crying for the departure of the power brokers who for 41 years imposed their rule. Citizens worked with the regular People's Police to prevent the shredding and theft of incriminating documents. Airline flights to Rumania were suspended...
Coming five days into a fierce offensive by leftist Salvadoran rebels which has reached the wealthiest areas of San Salvador, public sentiment had begun to swing to the rightist government under Alfredo Cristiani. Many saw the offensive, which killed hundreds of civilians and rebels, as a last-ditch effort to provoke outrages by a government closely identified in the past with the severest death squads in Latin America...
...nightmare began nearly seven years ago. In the early-morning hours of Jan. 11, 1983, Nancy Cruzan's car swerved on an icy and deserted Missouri country road. The car flipped and crashed. The 25-year-old woman tumbled out and landed facedown in a ditch. Medical help arrived promptly enough to save her life but not fast enough to save her oxygen-deprived brain...
...policy of renewal," advised Krenz, promising a "far- reaching program" to change the constitution, the economy and the education system. Yet he defined perestroika merely as something to "make socialism more attractive." For him, Soviet-style reform seemed not so much a welcome formula for change as a last-ditch effort to prop up the East German system before the rift between the party and society grows too wide to bridge. He flatly rejected any suggestion that East Germany might be merging into the West. "The question is not on the table," he said. "Socialism and capitalism have never existed...
...deeply sorry for the people who have been hurt," Bakker contritely told U.S. District Judge Robert Potter just before the sentencing. "I have sinned. I have made mistakes. But never in my life did I intend to defraud anyone." That last-ditch bid for leniency made little impression on the judge, known as "Maximum Bob" because of his penchant for stiff sentences. "Those of us who do have a religion are sick of being saps for money- grubbing preachers and priests," Potter angrily told the defendant. Bakker, 49, was quickly bound in handcuffs and leg-irons and driven...