Word: grounds
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...decision on Lance modernization until after the West German elections in 1990. But the Chancellor's popularity at home has sagged recently, and his center-right coalition is threatened by discontent over widely criticized tax and health reforms. In an almost desperate attempt to regain ground, he has adopted the negotiate-now attitude of the Social Democratic opposition and of his coalition partner, Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher. When Kohl sent two ministers to Washington to explain his reversal, they were met icily, even though Kohl has long been the West German politician closest to Washington...
...resumes his role as the "talking chief" of Leone, leading his villagers through hymn-inflected island chants and primal dances. And then, just before Governor Peter Coleman, Congressman Eni Faleomavaega and various other dignitaries get ready to join in the final swaying dance, a village chorus sits on the ground, chants its age-old traditions and dramatically, for its climax, flashes -- what else? -- an American flag...
...vehicles spew forth noxious clouds of particulate-laden exhaust, which becomes corrosive when dissolved by rain. Vibrations from traffic produce cracks in the monuments. More serious still is the damage caused by water. An estimated 80% of Cairo's incoming water supply escapes from leaking pipes into the ground. And the aging sewerage system, built 75 years ago to serve a population of half a million, is choking on the wastes of 13 million. Much of the wastewater overflows into the soil...
Many experts believe the ground-water problems have been exacerbated by the Aswan High Dam. Completed in 1970, it stopped the annual flooding of the Nile and made much more land available for agriculture. But the extensive irrigation used to make that land arable, along with poor drainage, has helped cause the rise in the water table's average level...
...groundwater rises, it dissolves mineral salts from the soil and bedrock. Ancient buildings, many made of porous limestone, act like sponges, sucking this salty water from the ground. When the water evaporates, the salts are left behind; when this happens at the stone's surface, these crystallize into destructive white lesions...