Word: scours
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PHOTO RECONNAISSANCE. Satellites in the top-secret Keyhole series and high- flying aircraft like the U-2 and SR-71 scour the Soviet countryside with sharp-eyed optical and video cameras that can pick out a football-size object from 500 miles. Beamed to earth electronically, the satellite images are enhanced by computers that can compare them with earlier pictures and show only those objects that have entered or left the area...
Certainly it can make mounting a defense harder. The notorious Carlos Lehder Rivas, said to be a leader of the Colombian cartel involved in last week's ranch seizure, had to scour southern Florida to find a lawyer willing to represent him in his current Jacksonville trial. His attorneys signed on only after he provided solid proof that they would be paid with untainted -- and unconfiscable -- money...
...designed and built, they can slow beach erosion. Nonetheless, most are ineffective in the long run and can actually exacerbate damage. A seawall, for example, may protect threatened property behind it, but it often hastens the retreat of the beach in front as waves dash against the wall and scour away sand. Louis Sodano, mayor of Monmouth Beach, N.J., knows the process firsthand. "When I moved here 28 years ago, you could walk the whole beach," he remembers. "Now the waves slap against the wall. We've lost 100 ft. of beach in the past 28 years...
Some of the major institutional investors scour the world for stock bargains. One who has been roundly rewarded at that game is Peter Lynch, the aggressive manager of the wildly successful Fidelity Magellan Fund (assets: $7 billion), which last year notched up 43.1% growth. Lynch is widely known for his willingness to pick a foreign concern as an investment as readily as a domestic firm. He casts afield to West Germany, the Netherlands and even Finland for his choices...
Another exercise was carried out on an American missile-firing range in Germany. Some shepherds recruited by Soviet military-intelligence agents were used to scour the range looking for components of the fired missiles. The shepherds were told by their GRU directors to collect every piece of metal they could find. The GRU was not interested in warheads as such, but in elements of the guidance system that experts in Moscow were able to use to improve their equivalent missiles. Take the Soviet Strela-2 antiaircraft missile -- it's an exact copy of the American Redeye. Take...