The terrain was so barren that people could only survive there by roaming ceaselessly from place to place in search of water and grazing land.

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But the popular desire to preserve the physical remains of the wall has run up against the economic realities of the cash-strapped city's need to develop long-barren areas of the capital, including the so-called death strip where many people trying to flee East Germany lost their livesdied.

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As 11 p.m. passed outside barren Gillette Stadium, a huddle of 40 or so Ravens fans gathered in the parking-lot cold to say farewell to the Baltimore team bus.

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So Africa's pyramids, wide at childhood and adolescence, are more promising than, say, barren Italy's (see chart 2), but also more combustible.

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