Word: plight
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Around the world the U.S. is confronted by the plight of poor but friendly countries that have borrowed heavily and spent unwisely. A traditional American approach has been to make new loans so that the debtors can repay old ones. Debt forgiveness, by any name, has always been anathema, since most of the borrowed money comes from private banks whose directors and shareholders are not in the forgiveness business...
...price of that failure is immense. Nicaragua is a wreck, inhabited by despair. A report secretly commissioned by the Sandinistas confirms the country's plight: with an annual per capita income of $300, Nicaragua is possibly the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Unemployment may reach 30% this year. Those who have skills to sell and some place to go get out: more than 10,000 have joined the contra counterrevolution, and at least 250,000 out of the population of 3.5 million have fled, many...
...moment, the slaughter of African elephants by poachers has pushed the whales' plight from the headlines, and in the case of the ivory trade, Japan has a better record of reform. In the mid-1980s, Japan accounted for as much as 70% of the final market for ivory products. In 1983 and 1984 alone, more than 135,000 elephant tusks were imported, mostly to be carved into signature seals called hanko. Then, as international complaints about the ivory trade mounted, Japan's dealers reversed their aggressive import policies. By 1988 ivory imports had been reduced by 75% from the peak...
Stopping in Cyprus on his way home to England, a Palestinian traveler fell into conversation with the distraught Ahmed and alerted the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in London of Ahmed's plight. Ahmed was soon assured by UNHCR that he would receive assistance in Cairo, so he flew back to Egypt. But when the Egyptians tried to send him to Somalia, Ahmed kicked and screamed. The Somalian Ambassador was called in, and he acknowledged that Ahmed would be imprisoned if he landed in Somalia. So the Ethiopian was returned to Cyprus...
...more than 700 boat people were sent to Tai A Chau. Each day the Hong Kong government dispatches a medical team to the island and provides drinking water, canned food and biscuits. Beyond that, the colony's administration is at a loss for a way to ease the refugees' plight...