Word: fractionalized
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...rockets that launched all these systems will soon be replaced by the space shuttle, which will reduce the cost of reaching orbit to a fraction of today's figures. Though the shuttle is only a modest first step, the story of aviation will repeat itself beyond the atmosphere. Many of you now reading these words will be able to buy a ticket to the moon at a price equivalent to a round-the-world jet flight today...
...matching its speed to the turning earth, 22,320 miles below. Now imagine a cable, linking the satellite to the ground. Payloads could be hoisted up it by purely mechanical means, reaching orbit without any use of rocket power. The cost of operations could be reduced to a tiny fraction of today's values...
Whatever the new base level, all members will also get to charge so-called differential premiums of up to $3.50 per bbl. The differentials, which traditionally have been set at no more than a small fraction of the base price, are supposed to be applied solely to specially attractive crudes, such as Nigeria's and Libya's low-sulfur oil, which is now much in demand for refining into gasoline. Veteran observers of past OPEC behavior expect the differentials soon to be turning up as part of the price for almost any grade of cartel crude...
Dramatic and horrifying though their plight may be, the boat people represent only a fraction of the world's unwanted exiles. Indeed, the age has been called "a century of refugees," because wars and political upheavals and natural disasters like famine and flood have made so many homeless. At the end of World War II, there were 40 million refugees in Europe alone; perhaps the most pitiable were the Jewish survivors of Hitler's Holocaust. At the time of the partition of British India, in 1947, 15 million were dispossessed. In 1950, 5 million North Koreans fled...
...condemned got little sympathy from Iranian students in the U.S., who were among the most vociferous critics of the Shah. Some pointed out that the death toll so far is a mere fraction of the tens of thousands who were killed during the last year of the Shah's regime. Others are disappointed that the trials are not public so that the facts of life under the Shah could be brought into the open. "The reason the executions were committed so promptly," says Younes Benab, an Iranian professor of economics in Washington, "is that there is fear in Iran...