Word: ton
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...FALLING. NASA warns that three U.S. satellites may soon crash to earth. First to fall, perhaps next month: the Solar Max Scientific Satellite. The agency hopes to rescue the eleven-ton Long Duration Exposure Facility, designed to test the effects of solar radiation on computer chips, by using the shuttle Columbia to retrieve it from orbit in December. A supersophisticated Air Force-CIA Key Hole spy satellite failed after deployment on Aug. 8. The $1 billion snooper is tumbling wildly, but the time of its demise cannot be predicted...
...brunt of the ban will fall on the Far East. Hong Kong's traders have a 700-ton ivory stockpile that they will be unable to sell anywhere except within that colony. Japan, which has consumed about 40% of all ivory in recent years, abstained from the vote at Lausanne. Japanese officials say they intend to honor the prohibition...
...extract gold from such low-grade deposits, miners must crush tons and tons of rock, which is piled into mammoth heaps and irrigated with cyanide. The cyanide percolates through the heap, extracting the gold. In the early days of the invisible-gold rush, a ton of ore might contain a few tenths of an ounce of gold. Today that minuscule amount would be considered high grade. Says Livermore: "They're mining deposits that we would have considered waste rock back in 1961." Nevada mines are now digging up a ton of rock to get back as little...
...encroachment from Africa's fast-growing human populations. African farmers or herdsmen trying to eke out a living covet the vast habitats set aside for animals and cannot understand why scarce financial resources go to protect elephants while people go hungry. To many Africans, the elephant is a five-ton nuisance that can trample a season's maize in seconds. As long as they feel that way, they will turn a blind eye to poaching. Revenues from tourism and safaris have yet to improve the lot of the African people enough to win them over to wildlife management...
...July, Kenya's President, Daniel arap Moi, set ablaze a twelve-ton mountain of illicit ivory -- 3,000 tusks worth $3 million. To those familiar with the plundering of Kenya's herds and the corruption in its wildlife department, the fire was a kind of exorcism. "If we go wrong here, hope will be lost in many parts of this continent," says Richard Leakey, who became head of the department in April. "If we go right here, there is a chance for things to happen elsewhere much more rapidly than any of us would have dared to believe...