Word: delta
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...region most affected - and the one that affects the most - is the Mekong River Delta in the south. Water levels in the nation's rice bowl have fallen to their lowest points in nearly 20 years, threatening the livelihoods of tens of millions of people who depend on the river basin for farming, fishing and transportation. The biggest problem, however, is not the water. It's the salt. During the dry season, when channels and tributaries run dry, seawater can creep more than 18 miles (30 km) inland. Vietnam has installed a series of sluice gates to hold back high...
Cairo, Ill., sits on a narrow peninsula at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, in the heart of a region called Little Egypt for the resemblance it bears to the flat, loamy landscape of the Nile River Delta. Charles Dickens, after a visit in 1842, dubbed Cairo a "dismal swamp ... uncheered by any gleam of promise," although Mark Twain rehabilitated its image 40 years later, making it the destination of Huck and Jim's river voyage in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. At its 1920s peak, Cairo was a boomtown of 15,000 people. But as river trade declined...
...chain smoker who has been ill for years, left for Saudi for treatment for a heart condition from where he is yet to return, and the peace process - and all Nigeria - were left in limbo. In December, the main rebel group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), announced it had lost patience with the delay and re-started its campaign of attacks on pipelines and installations and kidnappings of Western oil workers. A few thousand gunmen with a thing for shades, bandoliers and fast boats had the global price of crude back in their crosshairs...
...arrival of a functioning president might change that. Until this week, little was known about the self-effacing Jonathan save for his fondness for a natty black fedora. But there are reasons to believe the 52-year-old might succeed in the Delta. His family is from the southern Ijaw tribe - the first time the rebels have been able to talk to one of their own in the presidency. And he knows his homeland. In 2007, Edwin Clark, a longtime mentor and powerful backer to Jonathan, took the then newly elected vice president to the wild and dangerous creeks...
Jonathan is also well acquainted with the environmental damage oil has done to the Delta. He studied zoology, and later taught it at a university in the oil hub of Port Harcourt. He also once worked as an environmental protection officer in the region. "He will perform," says Clark, a political powerbroker in the south and then man who persuaded Jonathan to stand for vice president. (See if a military coup would help Nigeria...