Word: metrication
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...generations, Britain has reveled in a system of weights and measures that confounds the outside world. Instead of using the no-nonsense metric system, Britons measured their cricket pitches in chains (22 yds.), their horse races in furlongs (220 yds.), their meat in pounds and their beer in pints. Bowing to a proposal of the European Community, however, the British have tentatively agreed to convert their systems to metric, starting...
...relief from the drought that began in the spring. Just how much damage the prolonged dry spell has already caused was the subject of a preliminary crop forecast issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA estimated that U.S. grain production in 1988 may be only 212 million metric tons, down 24% from 1987. The corn crop is particularly hard hit -- 26% smaller than last year. The USDA pegged soybean production at 1.65 billion bu., down 13%. Wheat output is expected to decline 13%, to 1.84 billion bu. That drop would be much worse were...
After a five-year struggle to pick a politically and environmentally safe site to store nuclear waste material, Congress has settled on a sagebrush-covered ridge in Bullfrog County, Nev. After geological tests are completed, a shaft will be drilled into Yucca Mountain to store up to 70,000 metric tons of radioactive material early in the next century. Louisiana Senator Bennett Johnston, chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, led the effort to halt studies of alternative sites in Texas and Washington State...
...Africa, conditions are only slightly less precarious. Millions of people up and down the continent face spending Christmas Eve on empty stomachs. Many will surely die unless food shipments arrive early in 1988. The United Nations' World Food Program puts relief requirements for 15 needy countries at 2.7 million metric tons (the 15: Angola, Botswana, Chad, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger, Somalia, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zaire, Zambia and Zimbabwe). Only half of this goal has been met so far by donors...
Through the parched Eritrean highlands in northern Ethiopia, 25 trucks rumbled along a rough, winding road. Their cargo: 674 metric tons of food, enough to feed 30,000 people for a month, destined for drought victims in the provinces of Eritrea and Tigre...