Word: vastness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...nets yield almost no fish today, the same as yesterday and the day before that. For generations, Bun Neang's family has depended on the bounty of Cambodia's Tonle Sap, a vast lake fed by one of the world's greatest rivers, the Mekong. Two decades ago, his father could rely on a daily catch totaling about 65 lbs. (30 kg). When the water gods were feeling particularly charitable, he would land a Mekong catfish, a massive bottom-feeder that can weigh as much as a tiger. But today, when Bun Neang dips his net into the caramel-hued...
...energy crunches. Vietnam, for example, suffers from chronic electricity shortages, and compared with coal-fired and oil-burning plants, hydropower is a relatively clean and inexpensive solution. But dams also have severe, long-term environmental consequences. Vietnam's Mekong Delta, where the river finally meets the sea, is a vast web of waterways that serves as a giant rice bowl, providing the nation with half of its total agricultural output. Yet in part because of the increasing number of dams reducing the flow of the river, salt water from the South China Sea has begun traveling up the Mekong...
Moroccans call the nation's postindependence era, from the 1960s to the '80s, the "years of lead," a time when hundreds of political dissidents were jailed or "disappeared." The architect of the repression: longtime Interior Minister Driss Basri, King Hassan II's closest aide. Armed with a vast web of informers, Basri repeatedly quashed popular uprisings in the '80s and '90s. ("I'm not Jesus Christ," he once said. "If someone slaps my right cheek, I do not turn the left.") Fired in 1999 by Hassan's son and successor, Mohammed VI, he died in self-imposed exile in Paris...
...more important issues to deal with than Islamic dress, so the system continued to deal permissively with the 48 million Iranians under the age of 30, who make up more than two-thirds of the population. Some continued leeway on social restrictions was all the government could offer this vast, disaffected young constituency, a small consolation for the absence of political freedoms and economic opportunities. It was not San Francisco--there could be no cocktail bars or nightclubs--but neither was it Saudi Arabia...
...centerpiece of this monument to imperial grandeur was Barlow's famous spider-like "train shed" - at 243 feet, still the biggest single span of cast ironwork in the world. Beneath it lies the concourse, supported by nearly 1,000 cast-iron pillars in a vast basement. Once used as a warehouse for Northern bitters to quench Victorian London's insatiable thirst for beer - each pillar is said to stand two ale barrels apart - this muscular 19th century vision will be complimented with a 21st century sleekness: shops, bars, restaurants, a farmers' market and the longest champagne bar in Europe...