Word: drain
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...used to hearing about the financial aid that industrialized countries provide developing nations. So it's a bit of a jolt to realize how often poor countries end up subsidizing rich ones. Case in point: the accelerating brain drain out of Africa of highly skilled medical personnel to fill higher-paying positions in Europe and North America. A report in 2004 found that more than 5,300 doctors who attended medical schools in sub-Saharan Africa--almost entirely at public expense--now practice in the U.S. (An additional 3,500 or so are working in Britain.) An editorial in last...
...city traffic, small enough to fit in the tiniest of parking spots and highly fuel efficient. It seems like an even better idea now. But 11 years after Mercedes dreamed up the idea with Nicholas Hayek, the creator of Swatch watches, the minute Smart car has become an oversize drain on the automaker's profits. In the first six months of this year, Mercedes plunged into the red because of a massive $1.3 billion restructuring charge it took for its Smart operations...
...LONG WILL IT TAKE? Working at full capacity, the city's pumps could drain an Olympic-size swimming pool in 1.9 sec. At the current reduced pumping rate, New Orleans could be drained by Oct. 8, and surrounding areas by Oct. 18, the Army Corps of Engineers estimates...
...would it have mattered if the Corps had got all the money it asked for? Lieut. General Carl Strock, commander of the Corps, insists it would not have. The system might have been able to drain the floodwaters more quickly, but the big breach occurred in a levee that had recently been strengthened. "We were just caught by a storm of an intensity that exceeded the design of the project we have in place," Strock says. In other words, the levees worked just fine; it was the storm that screwed things up by being so powerful...
...history of Western development has shown one thing, it's that this kind of water shopping can go terribly awry. In the early part of the 20th century, Los Angeles famously--and secretly--bought up thousands of acres in California's Owens Valley, then proceeded to drain away the surface and subsurface water. After decades of pumping, a dozen Owens Valley springs have dried up, and water tables in places are too low to support once abundant native grasses and shrubs. In the West that has become a cautionary tale. "We don't want to be another Owens Valley," says...