Word: mud
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...floods and mud slides that have devastated Venezuela--and that may have killed as many as 30,000 people--were an all too foreseeable tragedy. Millions of people inhabit Caracas' ranchos, the squalid shantytowns that cling to both sides of the 6,000-ft. mountains ringing the capital. And for decades those people have fought a Sisyphean battle to keep their rickety tin, cardboard and clay-block houses from tumbling down the washed-out slopes during heavy rains. Hundreds have died in past downpours, but as los ranchos kept swelling in size and population, it was only a matter...
...toll was impossible to calculate as soldiers and rescue workers continued digging near the northern coastal town of La Guaira, just across Mount Avila from Caracas. Still, officials said the toll would certainly surpass 5,000 and could even reach 30,000. "There are bodies in the sea, under mud, everywhere," said President Hugo Chavez, as corpses filled the tarmac at nearby Simon Bolivar Airport. "It's horrible." How horrible was evident in the spectral gaze of Alegra Rangel, who had seen her four small children buried alive, inside the family's car, by a roaring mud slide...
...personal habits were decidedly odd. Mondays were "days of silence," when he refused to speak. A devoted vegetarian, he indulged in faddish dietetic experiments that sometimes came near to killing him. He eschewed all spices as a discipline of the senses. He napped every day with a mud poultice on abdomen and brow. He was so insistent on absolute regularity in his daily regimen that he safety-pinned a watch to his homespun dhoti, synchronized with the clock at his ashram. He scheduled his bowel movements for 20 minutes morning and afternoon. "The bathroom is a temple," he said...
...Marines, always proud of their mud-and-blood traditions, will soon be tooling around in swank, new Mercedes-Benz sport-utes. The World War II-designed jeeps have finally worn out, and the Marines decided that the Mercedes Gelandewagen best meets its need for a rugged off-road vehicle small enough to fit into helicopters. Most of the 62 vehicles have been sent to bases in California and North Carolina, and the final dozen will be delivered to Marines in Okinawa in time for Christmas...
Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov is a hunted man these days. As a crowd of journalists tailed him on one of his traditional weekend walkabouts through Moscow building sites awash in wet snow and mud, he tried his best to look the jaunty, workaholic city boss of old. But when the journalists cornered him, the mayor admitted that his mind was elsewhere. He was waiting for the next body blow from the Kremlin...