Word: volcano
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...wild mandarin trees hang over small, dark-roomed dwellings thatched with leaves, and dogs and pigs lie in the dust. The tourists who fly half an hour south to Tanna from Port Vila, the capital, come mainly to see the molten belching of Mt. Yasur, the island's live volcano, and rarely visit places like this, self-sufficient communities connected to the world beyond their borders by little more than a web of narrow walking tracks. Money isn't seen here much, either. While few Tannese villagers still favor the nambas or grass skirts seen in Ianapus, most still live...
Many Colombians, who saw one heartrending human tragedy after another on television, were less generous. Some drew parallels between the government response to the volcano and the Nov. 7 crisis at Bogotá's Palace of Justice, where 100 people, including eleven Supreme Court justices, died during a furious gun battle between troops and M-19 guerrillas. "The army lost no time in blowing up the Justice Palace," says a Bogotá lawyer bitterly, "but they couldn't get a water pump to Armero to save the life of a little girl." Indeed, 13-year-old Omaira Sanchez had become a national...
Distrust of government pronouncements has helped create an almost constant panic among the tens of thousands of Colombians still huddled at the base of the smoldering volcano. Twice since the initial mudslide they have been sent scampering to high ground after false reports of new eruptions. "Is it going to explode again? Please tell me the truth," implored Norma Duque de Ramirez, a former telephone worker in the mountain city of Manizales, where an international team of volcanologists have gathered to study Nevado del Ruiz. The scientists were far from reassuring. "This volcano is potentially at the beginning of activity...
...blacks demanded abolition of apartheid and whites were willing to accept only gradual change. Guerrilla wars in Central America raged unchecked, and the so-called peace process in the Middle East made no discernible headway. Nature joined politics in contributing to human misery as earthquakes in Mexico City, a volcano eruption in Colombia and a cyclone in Bangladesh claimed tens of thousands of victims. In the U.S., Reagan became the first President to confer the full powers of his office voluntarily on his Vice President, George Bush, though only for eight hours, while surgeons removed a cancerous growth from Reagan...
...unprestigious but increasingly profitable stock-and-bond-trading department, might have been born enemies. Peterson emerges as cold, almost oblivious to the people around him. A close associate who may have saved his life during a seizure recalls that Peterson never thanked him. Glucksman was mercurial, an "emotional volcano" in the phrase of a colleague, who might kiss or curse fellow employees but who almost never ignored them. Peterson represented the lordly tradition of "relationship banking," in which camaraderie with corporate clients was the firm's chief asset. On the strength of his status as former Secretary of Commerce...