Word: area
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...chased militants led by Mangal Bagh, who used to drive a bus, from the fringes of Peshawar, a key transit point for supplies for U.S. and NATO forces fighting the Taliban insurgency in neighboring Afghanistan. While the operation was nominally successful - Bagh and his men were driven from the area and his compound was blown up - the militant leader was back on his pirate radio station a few hours later, vowing to continue his fight for an Islamic state. In Swat, once a tourist haven 100 miles (160 km) from the national capital Islamabad, militants burned down the country...
...Terrorist Sanctuary The federally administered tribal Areas, which include Mehsud's South Waziristan base but not Swat, have always been Pakistan's Wild West, a lawless frontier land notorious for smugglers, thieves, guns and drugs. The FATA, as the area is called, is a legacy of a 19th century agreement between the British rulers of undivided India and the Pashtun tribes inhabiting the mountainous fringes of the Empire. In exchange for autonomy and the freedom to run their affairs in accordance with their Islamic faith and customs, the tribal leaders promised to guard the border with Afghanistan and keep peace...
...Khalid Aziz, a onetime political agent appointed by Islamabad to administer to the tribal areas, the militancy is an obvious outcome of the antiquated agreement. Development that brought schools, jobs, roads, health care and electricity to the rest of Pakistan largely bypassed the tribal areas. Unemployment among the population of 3.5 million hovers around 70%. Two-thirds live below the poverty line. Only 6% of inhabitants can read. For women it's less than 1%. "Given that kind of environment; it's not likely that you will see a Leonardo da Vinci come up," says Aziz, who now heads...
...half the wetlands that used to recharge our aquifers. So water shortages threaten to limit growth in a way that wetlands regulations or bad headlines never could. "Florida is astonishingly wasteful," says Cynthia Barnett, author of Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S. Now the Orlando area is pushing to suck water out of rivers to its north, local utilities are jacking up water rates as much as 35%, and South Florida's water board may cap withdrawals from Everglades aquifers. "The idea of water shortages down here never occurred to anyone," says environmentalist Shannon Estenoz...
...year, Thailand supported Cambodia's bid to gain UNESCO World Heritage status for a temple located in a disputed border zone between the two nations. Although the temple itself sits on land that an international court deemed to be Cambodia's back in 1962, Thailand claims the main access area to the temple as its own. So when Noppadon provided official Thai backing for Cambodia's sole application for World Heritage status?as opposed to a joint bid by both countries?nationalists in Thailand were up in arms. The constitutional court then ruled that Noppadon's decision to support Cambodia...