Word: switzerland
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Switzerland's travel posters and brochures still stress the majestic mountains and many lakes that over the years have lured millions of summer tourists to the tiny nation. Recently, however, there has been a subtle change in what the tourist literature portrays. While the brochures still contain scenes of happy vacationers strolling near or boating on lakes, some of them no longer show swimmers in the water. Reason: some of the most famous Swiss lakes are now badly polluted...
Thirsty Pachyderms. Evidence of the fouling of Switzerland's once pure waters crops up everywhere. Health authorities in the canton of Aargau recently forbade a circus to allow its elephants to drink from the river Aar; the water was too polluted even for pachyderms, the doctors said. Lake Geneva, whose transparent water and white chalk bottom once moved poets to lyricism, is becoming clouded and dull. Industrial, agricultural and household chemicals-not to mention raw human wastes-drain uninterruptedly into the lake, where they fertilize enormous "blooms" of rust-colored algae. When these plants die, they sink and decompose...
...again permitted everywhere on the lake and, says Dr. Heinz Ambiihl, chief fresh-water expert of Zurich's Federal Institute of Technology, "If the water is not more blue, it is at least less brown." Current plans call for the installation of such plants in cities throughout Switzerland at a cost of $2.5 billion-an enormous expense for a nation of 6.2 million inhabitants...
...portrayals of such tormented characters as the wounded Irish revolutionist in Odd Man Out (1947), Judy Garland's drink-sodden husband in A Star Is Born (1954) and Humbert Humbert in Lolita (1962); and Clarissa Kaye, 39, Australian actress; both for the second time; in Corseaux-sur-Vevey, Switzerland...
Other European currency exchanges were equally fuzzy. In Switzerland, officials prepared to charge fees instead of paying interest for short-term foreign-currency deposits. This would guard against an outbreak of speculation should the dollar begin to sink in the weeks ahead. As the week progressed, that plan hardly seemed necessary. With the Swiss Central Bank poised to buoy up the price of the dollar if it fell below an undisclosed "base level," the Swiss franc merely wobbled fretfully anywhere from 1.2% to 2.8% above its normal dollar exchange rate. In Paris, where a complex two-tier system separates fixed...