Word: mi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...late 1986, Soviet officials declared the site safe for at least 30 years. Yet today the sarcophagus is cracked, crumbling and in peril of a disastrous collapse. The melted-down fuel is turning to unstable dust. Contaminated objects are being smuggled out of the poorly guarded 1,092-sq.-mi. exclusion zone. Birds fly into the sarcophagus through holes as big as a garage door; rats breed in the ruin. The structure is so unsteady that a strong windstorm could smash it, sending a plume of radioactive dust into the atmosphere. "Nothing is being done to clean it up," says...
...spots abound in the buildings and equipment around Chernobyl. A disabled bulldozer sets off alarms on hand-held radiometers, showing 10 times the internationally accepted exposure level for nuclear-power workers. The big Mi- 8 helicopters that were used to drop sand into the blazing reactor in 1986 -- collecting such heavy radiation that some pilots died -- rest in a field along with hundreds of contaminated trucks and armored personnel carriers, many stripped of engines and electronic gear. The radiation is not enough to cause immediate illness, but looters are taking long-term risks. Health officials estimate that 10,000 deaths...
...cannot be reversed, but historic change seems to be in the making. In Canada the commitment to native self-determination followed another major step: the creation of a self-governing entity called Nunavut out of the vast Northwest Territories, effectively turning a fifth of Canada's 4 million-sq.- mi. territory over to 17,500 Inuit. In the province of Quebec, persistent agitation by 10,000 Inuit and Cree Indians against the second phase of an $11 billion hydroelectric project at James Bay, which would flood thousands more acres of Indian and Inuit lands, has placed the enterprise's future...
...Brazil, with 240,000 Indians in a population of 146 million, the government last year set aside 37,450 sq. mi. for 9,500 Yanomami, a fragile Amazon tribe whose way of life had been virtually destroyed by migratory gold miners. In the past 2 1/2 years, Brasilia has created 131 reserves covering 120,000 sq. mi. in 19 states that are home to 100,000 Indians. It is a beginning -- but it does not come close to ending the threat to the tribes, whose lands are frequently invaded by aggressive miners and ranchers and who receive little help from...
...Chancellor in 1969, West Germany still refused to recognize the postwar boundaries in Eastern Europe or admit that Germany would remain divided for the foreseeable future. Brandt swiftly changed much of that, signing nonaggression pacts with the U.S.S.R. and Poland in 1970 and ^ renouncing claims to 40,000 sq. mi. of former German territory incorporated into Poland. He also signed a treaty in 1972 to normalize relations between West and East Germany, reversing the Bonn government's immediate postwar policy of ignoring and isolating its Communist rival to achieve unification through attrition. In the end, Brandt's more compassionate policy...