Word: soiling
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Kudzu is a flowering, ropelike vine, first introduced from Asia in 1876. The U.S. Soil Conservation Service once paid farmers to plant it to stop erosion; now kudzu rampages across large swaths of the South, strangling and killing trees and all other plant life in its wake. Benign-looking cheatgrass carpets the shrub-steppes of the West and feeds some grazing species and birds. But it's also explosive kindling that increases the frequency and intensity of wild forest fires. Drive along any U.S. highway and you'll likely catch sight of purple loosestrife's telltale slender stalks and magenta...
...Jyoti Thottam's the growing dangers of the China Trade" [July 9]: Have we selectively forgotten that mad-cow-diseased beef and other tainted food products like bagged spinach and peanut butter originated on U.S. soil within the past few years? To pathologize China's industries as corrupt not only reeks of centuries-old Yellow Peril rhetoric but also fails to acknowledge the shortcomings of transnational regulations. We must take responsibility for cleaning up our own backyard when demanding that others take care of theirs...
...Carnoustie's general manager Graeme Duncan says a cold, wet spring has thinned out the rough. The winning score could be 20 or so shots lower than eight years ago, he reckons. But Carnoustie's head greens keeper, John Philp, whose fingers are stained black by the course's soil, says such a tally would be an insult to the links' distinguished history: "Golf was never meant to be a fair game, or an easy one. We've got the reputation as being a beastly test, but that's what golf is - it's a beastly test...
Pakistan's President, General Pervez Musharraf, is stumbling from crisis to crisis. His standoff with the Chief Justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, has galvanized the middle class against his regime. Doubts are growing about his ability to root out al-Qaeda and Taliban militants on Pakistani soil, in the West as well as at home. (On June 4, Pakistan's Interior Ministry issued a report saying the military was losing the fight against extremists.) And, perhaps most dangerously for him, Musharraf faces growing opposition from conservative Pakistanis unhappy with the country's pace of Islamization and his alliance with U.S. President George...
...during World War II. Yet what the famous photo captured was the second flag raising over the Japanese island. Charles Lindberg was the last surviving member of the group of Marines that raised the initial flag atop Mount Suribachi, the first time the flag had been planted on Japanese soil. Fearing it was so small it would be taken as a souvenir, a commander ordered the original flag removed. When a bigger one went up four hours later--and photographer Joe Rosen-thal captured the image--Lindberg was back in combat. He was given the Silver Star for his valor...