Word: rain
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...flood of refugees could slow to manageable proportions. After almost 6,500 Cubans were plucked from the waters on Tuesday and Wednesday last week, the Thursday-Friday total dropped to a bit more than 2,000. But the drop-off may have resulted only from the heavy rain, high winds and stormy waters that threatened to swamp the pitifully unseaworthy rafts before they could reach the picket line of more than 70 U.S. Coast Guard and Navy vessels patrolling beyond the 12-mile territorial limit off Cuba's northern coast...
Writing with great flair, Preston introduces his readers to the terrors of the filovirus, a family of threadlike viruses found in the rain-forest regions of Central Africa. He describes a 1976 outbreak that spread through villages near the Ebola River in Zaire, killing as many as 90% of those infected. This so-called Ebola Zaire virus is the deadliest of the filoviruses, but its Ebola Sudan and Marburg kin, while not as deadly, cause equally horrible symptoms...
...view, the worst is yet to come. As the world's population continues to grow, he writes, and human settlements and activity intrude farther into the rain forests, previously unknown viruses like HIV, Lassa, the filovirus and others are emerging to wreak their toll. In a rather mystical but ominous conclusion, Preston warns that "the rain forest has its own defenses...The earth's immune system, so to speak, is starting to kick in...The earth is attempting to rid itself of an infection by the human parasite. Perhaps AIDS is the first step in a natural process of clearance...
...north coast of South America still contains one of the largest unbroken tracts of tropical forest left in the world. Fewer than 50,000 people live in a natural kingdom larger than California that encompasses nearly all of Suriname, Guyana and French Guiana and is buffered by virgin rain forest in Brazil and Venezuela. Some parts of the woodland are so isolated from civilization that monkeys are more curious than fearful when they encounter humans...
...avoided a messy political debate by instead granting a smaller concession of 375,000 acres near the Guyana border. MUSA then began logging without specifying how it will abide by Suriname's strict forestry code. Experts claim that the only profitable way to harvest MUSA's particular stretch of rain forest would be to clear-cut the region, leaving behind a wasteland. Other Asian interests have also put in timber bids. The Malaysian investment group Berjaya Group Berhad is trying to secure rights to 7.5 million acres in Suriname...