Word: half-staff
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...west side of Killeen, Texas, is like countless other places in America's heartland, freshly carved out of prairie pastures with wide streets in bucolic neighborhoods like Sunflower Estates and Bridgewood. But on a glorious, cloudless fall day, the flags at the home-sales center nearby were at half-staff in honor of the 13 fallen at Fort Hood, victims of a gunman whose deadly attack was stopped thanks to a petite, long-haired, blond mom from the neighborhood...
...flew by helicopter from Helmand to the enormous NATO base outside Kandahar to learn that three Canadian soldiers had been killed that morning in an ambush. I stood in a small, bare concrete plaza as the Canadian flag was raised, then lowered to half-staff. Next the Danish flag and finally the NATO flag were raised and left to rest at half-staff. A small group of soldiers from assorted countries stood at attention and saluted as the flags rose and fell. There were no American flags this day, but there soon will...
...flew by helicopter from Helmand to the enormous NATO base outside Kandahar to learn that three Canadian soldiers had been killed that morning in an ambush. I stood in a small, bare concrete plaza as the Canadian flag was raised, then lowered to half-staff. Next the Danish flag and finally the NATO flag were raised and left to rest at half-staff. A small group of soldiers from assorted countries stood at attention and saluted as the flags rose and fell. There were no American flags this day, but there soon will...
...week anniversary of the earthquake by blasting the horns of their vehicles, part of national period of mourning that will last three days. The death toll has now surpassed 34,000, and the government says it's expected to reach 50,000. Around the country flags flew at half-staff and citizens observed three minutes of silence in memory of the dead. But in Yingxiu there was little time for rest. At an office of the local electric power plant, troops were still trying to save a man in his early 30s who, remarkably, remained alive but was imprisoned...
...never left. He was part of a lecture audience on campus the night Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. A cheer went up when the audience heard the news. Later a near riot erupted when Virginia Tech's few black students lowered the flag to half-staff. Since then, "we've opened doors to people from all over the world!" Lloyd marvels. This college town, where black and white, male and female, Puerto Rican, Indian, Indonesian and Egyptian, Christian, Muslim and Jew all died together--and mourned together--is a place that has changed profoundly over the years...