Word: reporter
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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When ten motorists died in the collapse of the Schoharie Creek bridge on the New York Thruway in April 1987, concern about America's decaying infrastructure turned urgent. Last week a report by the National Transportation Safety Board cited inadequate maintenance on the bridge and warned that similar conditions could exist nationwide. "We know there are 43,000 bridges around the country that have not been inspected even in the last two years," said Chairman James Burnett. Four more Schoharie-type bridges in Virginia and New York have collapsed in the past year...
...presidential election campaign because the trade gap, which hit a record $171.2 billion last year, has become the most serious threat to economic prosperity. The monthly trade deficit has declined from a peak of $17.6 billion in October, but recent figures have been going in the wrong direction. A report released last month showing that the deficit jumped from $12.4 billion in January to $13.8 billion in February sent the financial markets into a brief panic. Continued deterioration of the trade balance could lead to a further drop in the value of the dollar, a rise in inflation and interest...
...aquatic life. Most scientists believe the havoc is caused by airborne pollutants that are chemically transformed in the atmosphere and fall to earth in unusually acidic precipitation. Called acid rain, the phenomenon now stands accused of laying waste marine life along the Atlantic Coast as well. In a report issued last week, the Manhattan-based Environmental Defense Fund charges that nitrogen oxides spewed from U.S. power plants, factories and automobiles have played a major role in destroying fish and other creatures in Atlantic bays and estuaries. Acid rain, concludes Michael Oppenheimer, an atmospheric physicist and one of the authors...
Others are also skeptical. Michael Pace, a scientist at the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in New York, who reviewed the report before it was released, found it "hard to believe" that airborne sources were so important. "The numbers are very soft," said Pace. "They are only rough estimates...
Whatever its failings, the report was well timed. Foot dragging by the Reagan Administration on acid rain was attacked on several fronts last week in Washington. Testifying before a House subcommittee, James Mahoney, the new director of the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program, a group formed by Congress in 1980 to examine policy options on acid rain, distanced himself from a report by his predecessors that downplayed the problem...