Word: farness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...program last March, she asked businesses to buy books of the $2.50 coupons to be distributed to street people instead of the customary coins. Initial results were so good the program became permanent. Soon the center will offer coupons in various denominations and book sizes. The brightest sign so far is that some panhandlers have begun asking for coupons instead of cash...
When Democratic Congresswoman Pat Schroeder arrived in Washington in 1973 with two young children, she thought it would be only a year or so until Congress passed a federal child-care plan. Sixteen years later, Schroeder's children are grown, and the U.S. still lags far behind most other industrialized nations in national family policy. House Democrats have taken a big -- and expensive -- step toward catching up by defeating White House efforts to weaken legislation to create a national child-care program...
Between Africa, littered with the bloated carcasses of elephants, and the huge stockpiles of the Far East is a trail marked by secrecy and deceit. It is a trail traveled by ruthless poachers, cunning smugglers, corrupt and inept officials, and the barons of the trade: a handful of men who have never seen an elephant in the wild. They and their wealthy customers do not understand -- or choose not to -- the high cost of this trade. They do not see the herds mowed down by automatic assault rifles, the tusks frantically hacked from the skulls and the orphaned and wounded...
Over recent decades the trade became concentrated in the Far East, where ivory ornaments are highly prized. Until this year's trade curbs, Japan, the largest consumer, took in some 40% of the world's ivory, in contrast to about one-third for the U.S. and Europe together. Last year Japanese carvers turned an estimated 64 tons of tusks into as many as a million hanko, or personalized name seals. Much of this ivory was bought from Hong Kong, which has long been the world's ivory marketplace. Between 1979 and 1987, Hong Kong imported 3,900 tons. That represents...
There is considerable mystery about how the ivory gets from Africa to the Far East. Over the past decade, as much as four-fifths of that ivory has been of illegal origin -- poached, then smuggled. Sometimes the poachers cross borders to hunt, as from Somalia into Kenya or Zambia into Zimbabwe, then carry the tusks back by night. Some poachers are tribal villagers, illiterate and poor, who stalk their prey on foot, walking for weeks, living off game. A poacher in Kenya says he believes tribal charms make him invisible to antipoaching units. He buries his tusks in the village...