Mr Finlay said he met with the land agent in spring 2010 to discuss renting one of the Buchanan Trust farms, who said a property would be available in six months.

BBC: Buchanan Trust trust 'fails' ex-servicemen

Known as a land of "eternal spring", Tenerife is a popular tourist destination with more than 1.3m Britons visiting each year.

BBC: Supermarket in Los Cristianos

Jamila has spent the better part of the last year in New York, away from her family, working at a Brooklyn hospital as a house physician -- a low-paying and demanding position open to doctors in her situation -- in hopes it would help her land a residency this spring.

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It all seems like a mirage, and as such it will vanish as the land dries out, only to spring to life again in a few years or a decade's time.

BBC: Watching Australia's wildlife

In Chen's village of Nongmei in Guangxi, the land this year is too dry for spring planting.

FORBES: The country is facing a once-in-a-century drought.

This is because powers Metro has to buy the land needed for the tracks will expire next spring.

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The Chipping Norton-based Heythrop Hunt will not have its licence to trail hunt on land in Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire renewed in the spring.

BBC: Heythrop Hunt banned from National Trust land

His final confrontation, with the Albanians of Kosovo, provoked a NATO bombing assault in the spring of 1999 that destroyed government buildings, factories and much infrastructure in a land already ruined by years of international sanctions intended to punish Mr. Milosevic for instigating earlier wars.

NYTIMES: Slobodan Milosevic

This small chunk of land in the highlands of the Levant is where Jesus started his ministry, where Abraham staked his claim on the land and where King Solomon lolled in his tent by shimmering pools of spring water.

BBC: A Biblical guide to the West Bank