Word: km
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...wetlands alone cover an area the size of Ireland, while its fish diversity is rivaled only by the Amazon. But even as many of the world's other majestic rivers - the Nile, the Yangtze, the Mississippi - were efficiently exploited for trade or hydropower, the 3,000-mile (4,800-km) Mekong has until recently largely escaped the imprint of the modern world. During the colonial era, treacherous rapids stymied expeditions hoping to uncover its upstream secrets, leaving the waterway for local fishermen and farmers. By the mid-1900s, when the West was forced to withdraw from Indochina, the Mekong...
...somewhere to park its ballooning foreign-exchange reserves, the riverfront capitals of Phnom Penh and Vientiane now gleam with Chinese-built roads, buildings and other infrastructure. The torrent of investment will likely grow even greater next year when Chinese construction workers finish building a 1,100-mile (1,800-km) Yunnan-Bangkok highway that parallels a section of the Mekong. "Chinese are natural businessmen," says Liu Jingchun, a Chinese boat captain who transports goods between Yunnan and northern Thailand. "For so many years, we shut ourselves off from doing business. Now that we're allowed to trade again...
...More than 250 miles (400 km) downriver, China Inc. is also reshaping Laos' riverside capital, Vientiane. The landlocked nation has been shunned by many international investors as one of the world's last remaining hard-line socialist regimes. But what others consider a pariah state, China sees as an ideological soul mate and business partner. The biggest thoroughfare in Vientiane, as well as the capital's main park and the National Cultural Hall, were all built with money given to the city by the Beijing government. More than 3,000 Chinese laborers are also busy constructing a national stadium...
...with much of Maponya's life, the decision is as much political as financial. Soweto was created by the apartheid regime as a vast dormitory just over 19 miles (30 km) from Johannesburg city center (Soweto is short for South Western Township), where blacks would return each night to eat and sleep after another day of carefully controlled, low-paid work in the city. In the 1970s, this vast shanty town became a locus of revolution. After the end of apartheid, its tin shacks and dusty back alleys retained a reputation for poverty, unrest and crime. Maponya is undeterred. Poverty...
...Sept. 10, 1946, after 17 years as a teacher in Calcutta with the Loreto Sisters (an uncloistered, education-oriented community based in Ireland), Mother Mary Teresa, 36, took the 400-mile (645-km) train trip to Darjeeling. She had been working herself sick, and her superiors ordered her to relax during her annual retreat in the Himalayan foothills. On the ride out, she reported, Christ spoke to her. He called her to abandon teaching and work instead in "the slums" of the city, dealing directly with "the poorest of the poor" - the sick, the dying, beggars and street children. "Come...