Word: straits
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...barely clearing the hills above the Pacific port of Vladivostok, less than 40 miles from China. At the same moment, on the Bering Strait across from Alaska, the easternmost edge of the Soviet world is well on the way to an Arctic noon. And in Moscow, ten time zones to the west over an endless expanse of tundra, forests and inland seas, it is half past midnight, and yesterday has just ended. Not for eight hours will the commuters to the left head for their jobs in the capital from suburban Zagorsk. In the Soviet Union, more than anywhere else...
...shipping against primitive but effective mining. That was an improvement from the summer days when American sailors could only stand futile watch with rifles as a defense against mines. Since the Bridgeton debacle, the U.S. has safely escorted nine U.S.-reflagged tanker convoys past Iranian missile batteries in the Strait of Hormuz...
...charge. The tethers were set to keep the mines, waiting unseen but lethal, within 40 ft. or less of the surface. Navy specialists said the same type of mines had damaged the Bridgeton in the shipping channel to Kuwait in July and the Texaco Caribbean just outside the Strait of Hormuz in August. The same type of mine destroyed a supply boat in the Gulf of Oman last month, killing five crewmen...
...with a vengeance, while simultaneously there was new activity on the diplomatic front. By week's end United Nations Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar was packing his bags for a trip to Iran and Iraq that could lead to a lasting cease-fire. Meanwhile, the gulf and the Strait of Hormuz were littered with blasted, battered, shell-pocked ships from a dozen nations...
...operation was not impressive in scope or execution, but it certainly took the prize for gall. With 30 invited foreign journalists looking on, the Iranian navy last week sent six ships and six U.S.-made helicopters into the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman to search for, of all things, mines. Iran itself is widely assumed to have put them there. After five days the Iranians declared they had exploded four of the devices. "Our mission is to sweep the area of mines," an Iranian commander said with a straight face. "We have no idea who planted them...