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Jamaica's Olympic rule.
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• PASADENA, Calif. (AP) -- Fascinated by NASA's latest Mars mission and planning to tune in?
• Well, good luck understanding the space agency's everyday lingo, which resembles a sort of Martian alphabet soup.
• In the highly specialized world of spacecraft engineering, there are many moving parts and pieces -- not to mention processes. Names and descriptions are often reduced to acronyms and abbreviations, which are faster to string together in a sentence but can end up sounding downright alien.
• So if you want to know if MSL will nail the EDL and what it can do on different sols, you have to learn the language.
• Even speakers admit the jargon is sometimes jarring.
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• FRESNO, Calif. (AP) -- As demand for locally grown fruits and vegetables has increased, so too has the number of urban farmers markets sprouting up across the nation.
• The U.S. Department of Agriculture will announce Friday that the number of direct-sales markets has increased 9.6 percent in the past year, with California and New York leading the way.
• "Farmers markets are a critical ingredient to our nation's food system," USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan said. "These outlets provide benefits not only to the farmers looking for important income opportunities, but also to the communities looking for fresh, healthy foods."
• After 18 years of steady increases, the number of farmers markets across the country now registered with the USDA is 7,864. In 1994, there were 1,744.
• Organizations such as Slow Food, founded in 1989 to counter fast-food, junk-food lifestyles, first ignited consumer demand for fresh, local produce.
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