Word: torrent
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...Revised. Rivers crested 36 feet above normal. Whole villages vanished. Thirty-five major bridges were washed away, and the map of Tunisia was drastically revised. At least 1,000,000 livestock drowned and 10,000 olive trees were uprooted. The Zeroud and Marguelil rivers, swirling together, created a torrent eight miles wide. The force was so great that 100-ton concrete slabs, used to anchor bridges, were hurled downstream. An irrigation project that took two years and $7,000,000 to construct was washed away in six hours. As late as last week the Mediterranean was still an oozing ochre...
...torrent of Mao's words that flow from these extraordinary papers reveals the long-obscure human dimension of the man. He emerges as a compelling personality, supremely confident of his ability to surmount China's immense domestic problems. In speeches delivered at secret meetings of the Politburo, he comes across as passionate and often earthy. All told, the documents amply demonstrate that Mao, now 75 and reportedly nearing death, left an imprint on China and its 750 million people that will surely prove ineradicable for generations to come...
Brewster dramatized the point with an anecdote about "a student rebel friend" who, just before unleashing a torrent of rhetorical castigation, leaned over and whispered; "What I'm about to say isn't directed against you personally, Mr. Brewster; we know that you have to do and say the things you do because of your position." Recalled Brewster: "The sweetness of the charity did not offset the bitterness of the insult...
...exposure to equities is like the taste of blood to a young lion." The insurance industry's new look may have an even greater impact on the stock market. If insurers could sell mutual-fund shares to all their 132 million policyholders, they might well generate a torrent of cash. The thought of how much that could lift stock prices is enough to elate some Wall Streeters. The prospect frightens many others. They fear that prices could be driven beyond all relation to underlying values, and reach levels that could not be sustained...
...storm system floods the sewer mains, sending untreated household wastes into the river. Sometimes the old mains break, as recently happened on the Big Creek interceptor line. Each day for the past month, 25 million gallons of raw sewage have cascaded from a ruptured pipe, spilling a gray-green torrent into the Cuyahoga and thence into Lake Erie...