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(Continued from page 41)
walk in two shore resort towns, some makeshift sand dunes saved part of it -- from fire this time.
• The fire that broke out near a frozen custard stand in Seaside Park rapidly spread north into neighboring Seaside Heights, the former home of MTV's "Jersey Shore" reality show. With a stiff wind whipping the flames and driving them from block to block, the rest of the iconic boardwalk was in danger of going up in flames.
• So Seaside Heights officials tried a Hail Mary: they ripped out a 25-foot swath of the boardwalk they had just finished rebuilding five months earlier. And they filled the void with giant sand piles -- makeshift dunes designed to halt the spreads of flames and save the northern portion of the boardwalk upon which the community relied for its financial survival.
• It worked.
• ___
3 decades after destruction started, US chemical arsenal
dwarfs that of Assad in Syria
• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Three decades after the United States started destroying its own chemical weapons, the nation's stockpile stands at more than 3,000 tons -- about three times what the U.S. now says Syrian President Bashar Assad controls.
• Taken together, the remaining U.S. arsenal weighs about as much as three dozen Boeing 737s loaded for takeoff. And while the U.S. has made significant progress, eradicating 90 percent of the 31,500 tons it once possessed, the military doesn't expect to complete destruction until 2023.
• Deadlines have come and gone, and been extended. And, like other countries, the United States has found that complying with the Chemical Weapons Convention that banned such weaponry isn't easy to do.
• Now, as the U.S. and others push Syria to surrender its arsenal, the steep challenges that have hindered America's efforts for a generation illustrate the daunting task of securing and ultimately dismantling Assad's stockpiles in the middle of a civil war.
• Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov were meeting over two days with chemical weapons experts in Geneva to discuss how to do exactly that. They hoped to emerge with the outlines of a plan.
• ___
A brief history of Twitter and its initial stock offering
in 140 characters or less
• NEW YORK (AP) -- Twitter has redefined the way we communicate, get news (Continued on page 43)
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