Word: monsoon
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Outside the cream-colored Chamber of Deputies in Rangoon last week, troops in battle dress lined the streets; Bren-gun carriers patrolled the bazaars; anxious citizens stood nervously by, holding umbrellas against the monsoon rains and clutching their wind-blown longyis (Burmese sarongs). Inside the building, 248 Deputies were jammed together under the rhythmic movement of 18 ceiling fans that fluttered the loose ends of their yellow, pink and blue head kerchiefs...
...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...