Word: monsoon
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Southeast Asia, Laos has no telephone communication with the outside world; telegraph messages tend to run as late as 48 hours; the U.S. aid mission in the capital city of Vientiane (pop. 25,000) has a radiotelephone link with the U.S. aid mission in Bangkok, Thailand, but during the monsoon season, as now, messages are static-ridden and fragmentary...
They call it Olaotha, and pray to the goddess Ma Olaichandi to keep it away. But each year the people of Calcutta know that before the reviving monsoon rains arrive some time in June, the infection will sweep through their steaming and fetid streets, sometimes killing as many as half of those it touches. Even for a city stamped by the World Health Organization as the "worst cholera epidemic area in the world," this year's outbreak has been especially bad. At one point the Nilratan Sarkar hospital, which specializes in treating the disease, was admitting a new patient...
...Monsoon Rains. Rebel sources blamed Nangolan's tame surrender of Medan on the failure of reinforcements to arrive from North and Central Sumatra. Colonel Simbolon, the rebel Foreign Minister, had set out for Medan from the rebel capital of Bukittinggi, but his 100-truck column was bogged down by monsoon rains that caused landslides and washed away bridges. Another rebel column from Tapanuli was stopped dead by a government regiment that was supposed to switch over to the rebels but did not. Djakarta gleefully announced that the remnants of Nangolan's command were cornered on the eastern shore...
...months ago Ceylon was struck by a major natural disaster. Blinding monsoon rains washed half a million people from their homes and breached 500 of the earthen irrigation tanks that the civilization of antiquity bequeathed to the cultivators of the island's food crops. U.S. Ambassador Maxwell Gluck called on Washington for emergency help. Flocks of helicopters from the aircraft carrier Princeton dropped food that saved the lives of hundreds and, incidentally, gave the U.S. a needed boost in popular esteem...
BURMA. A five-year agreement to barter rice for Soviet-bloc cement, signed in July 1955, has proved disillusioning. The cement, for which Burma had only limited use, arrived during the monsoon and hardened on the docks. The Soviets turned around and sold the rice for cash in other Asian countries, thereby depriving Burma of potential export markets. Under another 1955 agreement, Russia is to "give" Burma $28 million worth of building materials and technical help toward construction of a hospital, a technological institute, a hotel, a sports arena and an exhibition hall. The agreement requires Burma, as a token...