Word: farness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...news about the California earthquake, the victims of another huge natural disaster on the opposite coast have been all but forgotten. Though the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Hugo when it smashed into South Carolina six weeks ago did not equal the damage caused by the tremor, it was by far the most destructive storm in U.S. history. In South Carolina alone, it killed 18 people, severely damaged or obliterated more than 36,000 homes, wiped out crops valued at $50 million and knocked down trees worth $1 billion. All told, property damage in the 24-county region that bore...
...most of it directed at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Citizens and local officials complain that FEMA did not act quickly enough to help the area rebound. The agency has closed all but five of 32 disaster-assistance centers after taking more than 51,000 applications for aid. So far, the Federal Government has committed $321 million to Hugo recovery efforts in South Carolina, and $100 million has already been paid to contractors and cleanup crews. About $17 million in checks for individual victims of the storm has also been mailed...
...Once unified by Moscow's tight grip, the countries of Eastern Europe are breaking free unevenly. Poland and Hungary lead the way, East Germany is groping to catch up, and Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Rumania remain far behind. As the participants -- even Gorbachev -- improvise from one day to the next, old alliances are being strained. "Almost overnight," says Adam Bromke of the Polish Academy of Sciences, "all the rivalries and tensions in the bloc that Communist orthodoxy had papered over for decades burst into the open...
...answer is that significant reform is in the interests of the Soviet Union. It frees Moscow from expensive policing operations and could head off, in Eastern Europe, the sort of protests that plague many of the Soviet republics. East Europeans are far less concerned about a Moscow-initiated crackdown than about a heavy-handed backlash from within the bloc. So is Mikhail Gorbachev. If Czechoslovakia were to launch an anti-opposition campaign, warns Bromke, "it would undermine Gorbachev's prestige at home and in the bloc and make it more difficult for him internationally...
Pyongyang has signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, but so far Kim's government has refused to fulfill its obligation to allow inspections. Washington has repeatedly asked Moscow to use its relationship with Kim to bring him around; U.S. officials say the Soviets promise to keep pushing Pyongyang to comply but reportedly add that their influence over the eccentric Kim is strictly limited...