Word: soiling
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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What is this? Where are we? Good question. Technically, we are in American ; Samoa, an "unincorporated territory" of seven tiny volcanic islands administered since 1951 by the U.S. Department of the Interior. Physically, we are midway between Hawaii and Australia, on the only piece of American soil south of the equator, and on the very edge of the international date line (this is one of the last places on earth where the day begins). Officially, we are celebrating Flag Day, the 89th anniversary of the first raising of the Stars and Stripes on this palm-fringed South Sea bubble...
...water. An estimated 80% of Cairo's incoming water supply escapes from leaking pipes into the ground. And the aging sewerage system, built 75 years ago to serve a population of half a million, is choking on the wastes of 13 million. Much of the wastewater overflows into the soil...
...groundwater rises, it dissolves mineral salts from the soil and bedrock. Ancient buildings, many made of porous limestone, act like sponges, sucking this salty water from the ground. When the water evaporates, the salts are left behind; when this happens at the stone's surface, these crystallize into destructive white lesions...
...nasty falling-out between normally amicable allies was the result of renewed German demands that the U.S. open talks with the Soviet Union on reducing Europe's short-range nuclear weapons, nearly all of which are deployed on West German soil. At one point, Genscher complained that his country would bear the brunt of a Soviet attack. An exasperated Cheney interrupted Genscher: "Look, if the flag goes up, we're all going to be obliterated, so we don't need to hear any of that...
Most of NATO's short-range nuclear weapons are based in West Germany and would be used exclusively on German soil...