Word: pickings
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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First get yourself (by plane from Johannesburg or car from Maputo) to Inhambane, a sleepy town on the southern coast. Then head to Tofo Beach, where a number of operators offer $40, two-hour speedboat trips. Try to pick the right day (calm and sunny, the better to spot shapes below the surface) and time (midday, when the sun is brightest). Also consider a wetsuit: the sea spray can be cold. (See pictures of luxury private islands...
...gotten over yet," says a soft-spoken Maria de la Paz Chicas, one of the few survivors of the El Mozote Massacre, in which the military murdered 1,700 villagers on Dec. 11, 1981. Chicas, who was 11 at the time, went into the nearby mountains to help pick coffee that day. She returned home to discover that everyone she knew - including playmates, neighbors and 17 family members - had been brutally slaughtered, and their bodies burned...
...mammography in younger women. Since 2002, when most professional organizations urged annual mammograms for women between 40 and 49 years old, the breast-cancer mortality rate in that group has steadily dropped, by about 3% a year, owing in large part to enhanced screening; doctors were able to pick up and treat cases of disease earlier...
...refuses to accept the limits to his ambitions. While these 50,000 Persian warriors disappeared in the desert, Cambyses didn't fare much better. At the time, he was marching on a kingdom in Ethiopia, but provisions ran out beneath a scorching sun and his troops were forced to pick lots having divided into groups of 10. According to Herodotus, the unfortunate 1 of each 10 was killed and eaten by the other ravenous troops. Cambyses eventually withdrew, chastened by Egypt and its desert...
...detail some other harrowing encounters between airplanes and birds, though you note that most bird strikes don't cause serious damage. How concerned should the flying public be? Pick your worries in life. They will continue to happen, but it's very rare. This U.S. Airways flight swallowed a lot of geese. It's just not within our technological ability to design engines that can handle that...