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- GRAPEVINE, Page 31Footnotes From the Front
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- By DAVID ELLIS/Reported by Sidney Urquhart
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- The gulf crisis makes headlines, but it has also produced
- a crop of strange and little noticed war stories:
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- PROPAGANDA MILL. Saddam's flacks are telling radio and TV
- audiences that American soldiers "are drinking alcohol, eating
- pork and practicing prostitution." A clandestine radio station
- claims that 40% of U.S. servicemen are infected with the AIDS
- virus.
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- WHERE'S THE BEEF? More than 650,000 cans of corned beef were
- recalled from Jordanian refugee camps after local health
- officials determined that it was "not fit for consumption." One
- examiner noted that the product, a gift from the European
- Community, was "full of hair."
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- SUIT ENVY. British Aerospace has equipped its gulf-based
- employees with state-of-the-art protective gear. A British
- expert contends that the lightweight suits, which have a porous
- charcoal lining that breathes in the searing desert heat, are
- "much better than anything our own soldiers or the Americans
- have."
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- BEASTLY FEAST. Hungry Iraqi soldiers have stormed the Kuwait
- zoo, killing and eating dozens of gazelles, antelope and other
- mammals. The World Society for the Protection of Animals has
- reports that some of the zoo's larger predators are roaming the
- streets and that a child was killed by a lion.
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- MINISTRY OF MORALS. Women in Saudi Arabia who drive cars or
- show too much leg are routinely persecuted by the mutawain, the
- country's dreaded "morals police." Now non-Muslim women are
- rejoicing at a rumor that a U.S. servicewoman pulled her 9-mm
- sidearm on a mutawain zealot who tried to stop her from driving
- a military vehicle near the Dhahran air base. The mutawain
- officer has reportedly been suspended.
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