Word: beset
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...Dayani is one of thousands of optimistic souls who believe a prosperous future can emerge from the stony soil of strife-torn Afghanistan. Since the brutal Taliban regime was toppled five years ago by Western coalition forces, the government of President Hamid Karzai, beset by warlords and Islamic militants, has struggled to maintain order and control. The country's primitive economy is dominated by illicit opium production, which by some estimates accounts for as much as one-third of GDP. About 40% of Afghans are unemployed. And last month, the World Food Program warned that millions of rural Afghans might...
That's how recent executions have proceeded in Iraq--at least when the equipment works. Since the Iraqi government reintroduced capital punishment in 2004, several executions have been beset by glitches and logistical snafus. At first, executioners used an old rope left over from Saddam's regime that stretched too much to break the condemned's neck; it sometimes took as long as eight minutes for the hanged to die. New ropes brought in for later executions jerked harder on the convicted person's spine, but executioners soon noticed the cords fraying on the bend of the reinforced steel installed...
...different multi-volume horror titles this year alone. Among them were two that should not be missed: Junji Ito's Museum of Terror and Toru Yamazaki's Octopus Girl. Arguably Japan's premier horror manga-ka, Ito has a fevered imagination that has given us Uzumaki, about a town beset by spirals, and Gyo, about dead fish that sprout legs and wreak havoc upon the land. Museum of Terror (two volumes so far, $14 each) collects the so-called Tomie tales, all featuring the beguiling teenage Tomie, a supernatural beauty with a nasty attitude who inspires complex feelings...
Even a relatively tiny bomb by nuclear standards might kill hundreds of thousands. But it could leave millions in the same city alive, panicked and beset, and the U.S. changed irrevocably...
When you've been in Iraq as long as I have - over three and a half years - the tragedies that beset this country can either become mere statistics, or they can become personal. I've only been back in Baghdad six hours, and already the week's most horrific story - the sectarian carnage that has killed nearly 100 people in the town of Balad - has taken on a personal dimension...