Word: portes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...heat of a summer's day, the highway curving across the desert from the port city of Jeddah to Mecca blurs into a shimmering ribbon of black. As the temperature climbs into the low hundreds, mishaps multiply: the blacktop is so hot that rubber tires explode and send cars swerving. No matter what the season, however, the same message greets travelers only a few miles outside the holiest of Muslim cities. Non-Muslims, the blue-and-white sign warns in English, must now leave the road. Only Muslims are allowed to visit Mecca; others must take a circuitous detour...
...freighter was carrying helicopters to the Sandinistas. Over his ship's radio, the captain of the U.S. destroyer contacted the Soviet skipper and asked him what his cargo was and where he was headed. The Russian replied that he was taking trucks and other merchandise to the Nicaraguan port of Corinto...
...prison had been sentenced to six years for having transcribed passages out of the Bible for his friends and colleagues. It is very difficult to obtain a Bible. Once a group of Jamaican churchmen shipped some Bibles to Cuba. These were loaded onto a truck in the port of Havana and taken to a paper factory where they were recycled and used for government publications. Once José Maria Rivero Diaz, a Protestant minister, was surprised by a guard while reading a small Bible which had been smuggled into prison. He was savagely beaten up in his cell...
...17th century brick building on Paris' Boulevard de Port-Royal, once the abbey where the Mathematician Blaise Pascal underwent religious conversion, a quite different kind of experiment is taking place. Into a small room of the Baudelocque Maternity Hospital marches a nurse bearing a tiny, wrinkled infant named Gery. He is four days old and weighs 6 lbs. 6 oz. The nurse carefully deposits Gery in a waist-high steel bassinet that stands next to a computer. The computer is attached to an empty nipple. The question to be tested: Exactly what sounds can young Gery recognize...
...most riveting parts of The Battle for the Falklands are the tales of pluck and heroism by British forces: a platoon sergeant who died attempting to silence an enemy machine-gun nest with hand grenades, a helicopter pilot who flew a solitary mission over Port Stanley, a wounded commando who stayed behind to cover a comrade's escape. By contrast, Argentine forces are generally, and perhaps unfairly, depicted as inept and their leaders as divided and squabbling. Yet if Hastings and Jenkins are partial to the home team, they can also be critical: of the Royal Navy...