1.   A sudden storm turned the earth to mud.

2.   Compounding the heat has been the lack of any significant rainfall here since early June, turning the earth into a vast radiator.

3.   Hard summer rains fall every afternoon here on the border with Ethiopia, turning terra cotta earth into mud and eroding a mile-long embankment.

4.   Instead, no earth has been turned, and no end is in sight to the legal and bureaucratic jousting.

5.   It looks as if the earth were turned inside out and allowed to bake.

6.   --NATO officials in Brussels showed an aerial photograph of what they said appeared to be freshly turned earth near Orahovac, Kosovo.

7.   We dug and hoed and turned the earth.

8.   The drought has turned the earth into pale dirt.