Word: mi
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That comets do occasionally strike the earth seems certain. Some scientists think a tiny chunk of a comet, exploding in the atmosphere above Siberia in 1908, caused a tremendous blast and fireball in the Tunguska region, felling trees in a 200-sq.-mi. area and knocking the nearest residents (40 miles away) off their feet...
...Trinidad, a town in the department of Esteli, about 60 miles from the Honduran border. Comandante (Colonel) Javier Carrion, 31, the commander of the northern military zone, rushed one counterinsurgency battalion, or BLI, plus local troops to the town and called in air support from three Soviet-built Mi-24 Hind helicopters, the gunships equipped with machine guns and rockets that are being used by the Soviets in Afghanistan. The contras retreated and have not mounted a major assault since. A senior U.S. official in Washington conceded two weeks ago that the Sandinista counteroffensive had pushed...
...disaster could have been far worse. In much of the 890 sq. mi. of Mexico City, an area that is home to 18 million people, life had returned to something akin to normal last week. The most severe damage was confined to a 13-sq.-mi. zone that encompasses the city's business district. Even there, the pattern of damage was quirky. Said Richard Bonneau, a member of a French rescue team that arrived in Mexico City two days after the quake: "We thought we would find one part of the city destroyed. But it's a building here...
...striking the Mexican capital, the killer quake could not have chosen a more vulnerable target. Mexico City is at the heart of the world's most populous metropolitan area. Some 18 million people, a fourth of the nation's inhabitants, are jammed into a mere 890 sq. mi., or roughly 1% of the predominantly rural country's land area. By one estimate, nearly a third of all families in Mexico City huddle together in a single room--and the average family has five members...
...accuracy of that assessment is difficult to verify, but one thing was clear last week: ferocious fighting was taking place in Afghanistan, some of it within a few miles of the Pakistani border. About 20,000 Soviet paratroopers, backed by Mi-24 helicopter gunships, artillery and armor, blasted the Afghan border provinces of Paktia and Nangarhar. They were resisted, at times in bitter hand-to-hand fighting, by an estimated 5,000 Afghan rebels known as mujahedin. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, were killed on both sides. At least 300 rebel casualties were carried into refugee camps on the Pakistani side...