Word: mi.
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Mexico, and 250 more are imperiled. Some choice species that sell for a few dollars each south of the border may fetch $50 or $60 at a Los Angeles nursery. Texas has no state law prohibiting the harvesting of cacti. While national preserves like the huge (1,100 sq. mi.) Big Bend National Park are protected by federal law, they are nonetheless havens for botanical bootleggers. "We don't know the numbers of cacti that are coming out of the state," sighs Dennie Miller, executive director of the Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute. "It could be a million a month...
...Soviet military power. In the past two years, the Soviet Union has garrisoned about 10,000 ground troops on four islands north of Japan. The Soviet Union seized the islands at the close of World War II, but Japan still claims them. This newly strengthened Soviet outpost includes Mi-24 assault helicopters, among the most sophisticated antitank gunships in the world and therefore an obvious threat to the Japanese armored units stationed just across the Nemuro Strait on the northernmost Japanese island of Hokkaido...
...rash of mishaps involving salt domes. Last June methane gas exploded at a salt mine on Belle Isle, La., killing three miners and injuring 17 others. In November an oil-drilling rig accidentally punctured a salt-mine shaft under Jefferson Island, La., sending much of a 1.5-sq.-mi. lake gurgling down into the dome. The most frightening accidents have involved still another use of salt domes: as cheap, convenient storage tanks for crude-oil and natural-gas products. Last fall hundreds of people had to flee Mont Belvieu, Texas (pop. 2,700), which sits atop the largest such hydrocarbon...
...vibration" that struck Belgian Artist Jean Verame, 44, in the Sinai Desert. The Sinai's relief is crazy," he says, "its density is fabulous." He simply had to paint it. But not on canvas. The artist's plan was to decorate the desert -specifically, the 5-sq.-mi. Plateau of Hallaoui-with patterns and fields of cobalt blue paint. "Blue," he explains, "because this color does not exist on the earth's surface." Despite impressive credentials -Verame had already festooned a dried riverbed in France and a mile of the Corsican coast-it took the artist...
...embarrassment as well as consternation. As it happened, the announced merger came only a day after Libyan officials revealed that they had signed a long-term contract with Elf Aquitaine, France's state-con trolled oil company, for exploration rights covering about 6,000 sq. mi. of Libya's oil fields. It was obviously a strange thing for France to do: strike an oil deal with hostile Libya at the very time that it was encroaching on friendly Chad...