Word: verminous
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Stale Scoop. Quartered in Vientiane's vermin-infested Constellation Hotel, newsmen of necessity pooled their scraps of information. One reporter who did not join the sweaty, sociable circle was Pundit Joe Alsop Jr., who arrived with a copy of Thucydides under one arm, sped off to an air-conditioned room in the residence of U.S. Ambassador Horace H. Smith. Columnist Alsop stealthily cabled what he thought was a scoop on the Laotian appeal to the United Nations. Trouble was that the reporter pool at the Constellation had filed the same story the day before...
...visceral sensation: the case of the body-snatchers Burke and Hare, as told in a story by Donald Taylor. In the last century, it seems, the teachers of anatomy in Edinburgh were forced to deal with "resurrectionists" for the dissection subjects they needed. Two of these "vicious human vermin of the gutters of the city" find it more convenient to murder than to dig up their stock in trade ready-killed, and familiar faces begin to show up on the dissecting tables, faces that had been seen alive, laughing and talking, a few hours previously...
They gave her the big buildup. In the first days of shooting she was photographed-in Technicolor, of course-peeping through the autumn foliage, splashing in her swimming pool, lounging in her penthouse, peeking roguishly from underneath the rumpled bedclothes. No doubt remembering the animated vermin that made such a popular success as Cinderella's coachman, Producer Disney surrounded her with plenty of cute little "real-life" mice. He also plumped up the supporting cast with the famous bunny brigade...
Impudent Husbands. In the provinces the situation is worse. "Unfortunate women, who are homeless, covered with vermin and filth, are selling their bodies for 5 to 20 zlotys [a zloty is 25?]." Poverty has driven many husbands to encourage their wives to prostitute themselves, and Lastik complains of "their impudence and shamelessness" because "they are certain of immunity in Poland...
...after day, in the shade of the great jacaranda tree outside the courthouse at Nyeri, an old woman squatted, moodily scratching the vermin beneath her filthy rags. Inside, on trial for his life before a British judge and a jury of three Kikuyu elders from his native village, was her son, Dedan Kimathi, 36, self-styled Field Marshal, Knight Commander of the African Empire, President of the Parliament of Kenya and Commander in Chief of the Land Liberation Army, the man once feared through all Kenya as the leader of some 10,000 Mau Mau terrorists...