Word: kingdoms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...foreign travel. Over a decade, China went from being a xenophobic recluse to a tourism junkie . Vietnam pursued a parallel course; visas for travel there, formerly very difficult to obtain, were suddenly not a problem. The Western boom in Thai cuisine and a massive promotional campaign made the Thai kingdom a hot destination; the buoyant rise of tourism in Bali in the early 1990s encouraged the building of resorts in new destinations in the Indonesian archipelago, such as in neighboring Lombok. Even creepy Burma tried to polish its image and let in private tourism companies...
...Disclosure of Abu Bakr's role in feeding information to U.S. intelligence could also be part of a campaign by the Saudi's to counter suggestions that the Royal Kingdom is soft on terror. Since a series of bombings in early May in Riyadh, the Saudi government has killed or arrested 175 people. Al-Ghamdi is thought to have been the ringleader of those attacks...
...Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, plotting "second wave" attacks on Americans and their allies until Mohammed's arrest in Pakistan last March. As more and more al-Qaeda field leaders were rounded up, al-Ghamdi rose in the ranks, safely hiding in Saudi Arabia until the May 12 attacks galvanized the kingdom's rulers into cracking down. U.S. officials believe al-Ghamdi may have a knowledge of conspiracies now being hatched all over the world, and that he could reveal previously unidentified sleeper cells in the U.S. and Canada. There's even a chance he could know something about the whereabouts...
...Andalus, made his final stand against the Christian forces of the reconquista before fleeing to North Africa. Here, too, are buried Ferdinand of Aragon and his queen, Isabella of Castile, who ousted Boabdil in 1492 and later reneged on a promise to allow religious tolerance in their newly conquered kingdom. These days Ferdinand and Isabella must be spinning in their shared mausoleum. For the first time in five centuries the cry of the muezzin can be heard calling the faithful to prayer from atop the first minaret to be built in the city since Moorish times. "This is a homecoming...
...Baer, the clan is "as violent and vengeful as any Mafia family," and the monarchy is "hanging on by a thread." There are alleged kickbacks by bin Laden family businesses to Saudi overlords and princes living large as the kingdom's 23 million people endure a steady decline in their living standard. Baer cites data indicating that the Saudis funneled half a billion dollars to al-Qaeda over a decade, while Wahhabi-controlled religious schools indoctrinated a new generation of fanatics...