Word: islets
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Chau, a little island off Hong Kong, is a hilly, barely habitable patch that measures less than half a square mile. Abandoned more than a decade ago by native fisherfolk, the islet is teeming with life these days. Its new residents are Vietnamese boat people who, having fled their homeland and braved the dangers of the high seas, expect to make it the departure point for a better life elsewhere. More than 4,500 refugees vie for space in Tai A Chau's dozen crumbling huts and 50 tents, and the number keeps rising. Last week alone more than...
Past attempts to implant fetal islet cells failed because a small percentage of these cells have antigenic markers that trigger an immune response. "The classic view was that since these antigens were genetically controlled, there was no way to remove them from the cell," says Kevin Lafferty, an Australian-born immunologist who is director of research at the Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes in Denver. In 1980, however, Lafferty discovered that culturing islet cells in an oxygen-rich environment for a couple of weeks kills those that bear trigger antigens. Says Calvin Stiller, an immunologist at the University...
...seven hours, through the dead of night, the screaming winds whipped across the Bay of Bengal at up to 100 m.p.h., pushing before them a thunderous storm surge that crested as high as 50 ft. On Char Clarke, an islet seven miles southwest of Urirchar, Ali Ahmed, 46, first heard the wind gusting violently during the early part of the night and saw the mangroves swaying wildly. As island elders huddled around a radio, trees and whole huts began crashing to the earth around them. Finally the huge tidal surge ravaged the settlement, submerging all except those who managed...
...Whole settlements had been swamped or washed into the sea. Across the length and breadth of Urirchar there hung an eerie silence, broken now and then by the wails of survivors. Only a few houses remained, among them the Forestry Department building. Of some 10,000 residents of the islet, mostly peasant farmers and a few shopkeepers, up to 7,000 were dead or missing. The flat, wet land was dotted with corpses and the carcasses of cattle; vultures and crows feasted. Upon the muddy waves of the Bay of Bengal floated hundreds upon hundreds of blackened, bloated bodies...
...Mayaguez incident. On May 12, 1975, Cambodian forces seized the American merchant ship Mayaguez and its 39 crewmen in the Gulf of Siam. On May 14 the ship was freed, after U.S. fighter jets had sunk three Cambodian gunboats, the Marines had landed on Cambodia's jungle islet of Koh Tang, and the U.S. had bombed a Cambodian air base at Ream. As soon as the ship was seized, President Ford simply declared the matter "an act of piracy," then threatened military action. On May 14 he dutifully appealed to the United Nations for help in obtaining the ship...