Word: area
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...military is stretched thin and taking a pounding. There are about 20,000 troops deployed in a conflict area half the size of Israel, and they-like their beleaguered American counterparts in Iraq-are outmaneuvered by a ruthless and elusive enemy that shelters amid a Muslim population largely hostile to Thai security forces. Two roadside bombings in May alone killed a total of 22 soldiers; their well-drilled killers executed some of the wounded survivors by shooting them in the head or strangling them. Last month, junta leader General Sonthi Boonyaratglin publicly admitted that the fighting in the south...
...reason to believe that the incident was nothing more than "a failure of our infrastructure," the mayor said at a press conference about two and half hours after the explosion. "No terrorism... No criminality." According to Con Ed, the incident was caused by an operational problem in the area. Millions of pounds of steam course through pipes below New York City streets every hour, heating and cooling thousands of buildings. They can be prone to breakage: in 1989, a massive steam explosion that sent mud and refuse several stories high killed three people. Bloomberg said that a 24-inch steam...
...death toll from the temblor, which shook Niigata, Nagano and Toyama prefectures, was nine as of Tuesday, with one person reportedly still missing. That's far less than a 2004 quake that struck the same area and killed more than 60 while leaving 16,000 homeless. But instead of feeling relief, the entire country has been rattled by TV images of black smoke billowing from Niigata's Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant, located just 9km (5.6 miles) from the epicenter in the Sea of Japan. The plant suffered a string of problems when the temblor struck. Tokyo Electric, the Kashiwazaki...
...amount of radioactivity escaping into the environment from the water and exhaust leaks was reportedly minuscule and posed no threat to people or the surrounding area. But questions are being raised over the safety of 16 other nuclear plants located throughout Japan, a nation that lies atop numerous active fault lines. The intensity of Monday's quake was 2.5 times the level the power plant's structures were built to sustain without any damage...
...perhaps not as readily apparent as it is in China. Nevertheless, more states should follow the example set by California and New York and countries like France and England, where smoking is banned in most, if not all, public places. In addition to improving public health in that specific area, these bans raise awareness to the serious and often underestimated dangers of second-hand smoke and could inspire other countries to follow suit. The decision should be simple—countries owe it to their citizens and foreign visitors to protect their health...