Word: swath
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Douglas Porch's The Conquest of the Sahara, it's not so easy. While the story is told from the perspective of the colonial-French, their swath of death and mutilation across "the world's greatest desert" hardly makes them lovable. On the other hand, their opponents, the Tuareg desert tribesmen and their sometime allies the Chaamba Arabs, are at least as treacherous as the French. No one likes a story without sympathetic characters, and the only ones in Conquest of the Sahara are the nameless Arab and Black peasants and slaves who are robbed, raped, and murdered by both...
...capitalist tools go, Malcolm Forbes, 65, cuts a wide swath. The millionaire chairman and editor in chief of Forbes magazine last week embarked on an 18-day swing through Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei for the sheer swell of it. Traveling with an entourage of 20 in his private Boeing 727 (dubbed Capitalist Tool, after the magazine's slogan), Forbes made his first stop at the Grand Palace in Bangkok. He brought along an $80,000, 90- ft.-tall, elephant-shaped balloon to entertain the royal family, but high winds curtailed the flight. Forbes is not bothered by little deflations...
...downcast Democrats, the results of Senate races provided the one swath of cheerful news. The party did not regain the majority control it lost in 1980, but the power has shifted a solid bit its way. The net gain of two seats will reduce the G.O.P. majority to 53 to 47. Moreover, the ideological tilt will be even greater than the simple partisan tally indicates, since the two lost Republican seats are going, in effect, to liberal Democrats. Because of the shift, the Senate is more likely to slip back under Democratic sway in 1986, when almost twice as many...
...first week passed peacefully, with a swath of petty arrests and just one momentary scare: a security guard aboard an athletes' shuttle bus radioed that they were being followed by a suspicious car. In swooped the highway patrol and a sheriffs helicopter. The lawmen arrested a man, who explained his cache of weapons and explosives by describing himself as "a warrior of the people" and voluntary protector of the athletes. He was held for psychiatric evaluation...
Something Out There covers the broad swath of Johannesburg suburbs, where two strange things are happening at the same time. One of them makes the headlines. A mysterious creature seems to be roaming over manicured lawns. House pets have been found mauled or killed, swimming pools disturbed by unexplained rustling in surrounding trees. The more serious menace goes unrecognized and unheralded. A seemingly harmless white couple rent a house and are secretly joined there by two black men in a plot to blow up a nearby power station...