Word: sq
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Anarchy may be too mild a term for the situation in the 75-sq.-mi. triangle, where bandits, remnants of China's pre-1949 Nationalist army, and more than half a dozen "liberation armies" scramble for their share of the $800 million annual opium haul. Last February Thai armed forces ousted the region's biggest opium smuggler, Khun Sa, and his 3,000-member Shan United Army from their luxurious mountain aerie in the border town of Ban Hin Taek. Khun Sa fled back to Burma, and his departure created a power vacuum that lesser warlords...
...Sudd, Arabic for barrier, is aptly named. Its central 7,000 sq. mi. are permanently clogged with reeds and papyrus and infested with 63 species of mosquito. From May to October, the White Nile floods and temporarily extends the swamp another 4,300 sq. mi. Says Daniel Yong, a member of the area's nomadic Dinka tribe and a Jonglei Canal project official: "In the rainy season there is water everywhere, but in the dry season you can die of thirst." The Sudd proved an obstacle to 19th century explorers, but today it is more of a hindrance...
...lucky to find occasional farm work in the nearby soybean and rice fields. Now a huge $25 million plant is rising in an empty meadow across the road from Baker's. When it opens next April, the Martco plant will churn scraps from southern hardwoods into 130 million sq. ft. of building board per year, providing up to 150 jobs. "We've got about 200 names on file already," says Jonathan Martin, who is supervising construction of the plant. "We must get two or three people in here every day asking when we're going to start...
...outskirts of Denver, a storehouse of potential death sprawls across 27 sq. mi. of rolling prairie. It is the site of the U.S. Army's Rocky Mountain Arsenal, which produced weapons and chemical agents until 1969. It now harbors corroded canisters of mustard gas, lethal phosphorus wastes from incendiary bombs, unexploded rockets and mortar shells embedded in a former firing range, millions of cubic yards of soil peppered with pesticides and an abandoned five-story production plant contaminated with nerve gas. Two vast man-made lagoons, once used as dump pits for toxic chemical and biological wastes...
...made clear that its porosity should have been uncovered long before the $2.3 million suits ever went into orbit. There was, however, no doubt what went wrong with Lenoir's suit. Despite all efforts during the flight, the suit would not reach the required pressure, 4.3 Ibs. per sq. in. (Although this is only a third of the earth's normal atmospheric pressure, it is adequate because the astronauts are breathing pure oxygen rather than the oxygen-nitrogen mix that they would get at sea level...