Word: massing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...these days and his political bloc pushed to the sidelines of the provincial elections on Jan. 31. A series of military defeats at the hands of toughened Iraqi security forces plus political missteps over the past year by al-Sadr and his followers have left the future of the mass movement in doubt. And without a solid showing of popular support in the coming vote, the Sadrists appear set to lose what remains of the enormous political power they once held. (See pictures of life returning to Iraq's streets...
Sadrist parliamentarian Ahmad Hassan Ali al-Masiodi said the movement will retain its stature regardless of the elections. Al-Masiodi pointed to al-Sadr's previous ability to call up mass street protests with a word as a sign of the movement's clout and relevance. "The movement is very strong now, even better than before," says al-Masiodi. "You can notice this when we call for demonstrations in the number of people who come to join." But al-Sadr has not tested his strength with street marches lately. And that power, too, may go the way of his waning...
Frustrated by years of wrangling with city business restrictions and what he considers infringements of his First Amendment rights, Kenneth A. O’Brien—owner of the used book stand on Mass. Ave between Linden and Holyoke Streets—said he plans to give away his entire inventory by April.O’Brien, who said he has spent most of his life on the streets, recently found a home in Cambridgeport with his partner and pets. But the 55-year-old said slow business has made paying the rent difficult, and now he faces possible...
...suffocating, two-mile-thick blanket of pollution that hovers between 15 and 18,000 feet. "The whole cockpit fills with an acrid smell," says Horwood, who started noticing the cloud in 1997. "Each year it just gets worse and worse." What comprises this nuisance - a sprawling high-altitude mass of air pollution that stretches from the Arabian peninsula to the western Pacific Ocean - has long captured the curiosity of scientists. A report released in the Jan. 23 issue of Science breathes fresh air into that ongoing study, confirming that the mass, nicknamed the 'Brown Cloud' but comprised of several small...
Scientists have been gathering different kinds of information about the mass for years. A 2008 study by the United Nations Environment Program, for instance, warned that 340,000 people in China and India alone die annually from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases that can be traced to human-induced emissions of combustible particles in these atmospheric brown clouds. It concluded that regional pollution's impact can go global since winds blow soot across the world within weeks, and it, too, noted that brown clouds exacerbate deadly flooding and droughts...