Word: last-ditch
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What if a large asteroid or comet is discovered heading toward the earth? At the AGU meeting, Shoemaker and Colleague Alan Harris, of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., suggested that the intruder could be diverted by landing a thrusting device on it. As a last-ditch effort, they say, a small nuclear warhead could be detonated on or near it. Says Shoemaker: "We have the technology to do that right now." But if the explosion simply broke the meteorite into large chunks, the danger would only be multiplied. "The more prudent solution," says Harris, "is to burrow...
Undaunted, Nakasone's planners came up with a last-ditch ploy: to call the lower house of parliament into special session to debate relief measures for the yen. By preventing parliament from recessing, the Prime Minister could exercise his power to dissolve the lower house and call elections. If that happens, political observers give Nakasone a good chance of revising the party's restrictive rule. "It is a document that is easy to change," said an L.D.P. official. If Nakasone fails in his bid for new elections, however, his chances for another term are slim indeed...
...after the higher court reversed that opinion Friday, the forum made a last-ditch effort Monday morning to hold the debate in the studios of WCVB-TV, Channel 5, in Boston. Terzi would speak via satellite from the television station's New York City affiliate...
...precluded by civil war. The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA)--a Marxist group supported by Cuba and the Soviet Union--prevailed in 1976, but Savimbi's group, a Chinese proxy, failed to secure itself a role in the new government. This despite the Ford Administration's last-ditch commitment of $32 million in CIA aid to another "anti-communist" faction, the now-defunct National Front for the Liberation of Angola...
...likely to aggravate the global petroleum surplus. "This collapse occurred in anticipation of trouble," said Constantine Fliakos, who follows the oil industry for Merrill Lynch. "You can imagine what will happen when the real flooding of an already glutted market begins." A price war would be a risky, last-ditch change in strategy for OPEC, which has been floundering in an ocean of crude. For the past four years OPEC has tried to shore up prices by limiting the worldwide oversupply. The cartel squeezed its output from a peak of nearly 32 million bbls. per day in 1979 to just...