Word: largest
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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There's something especially loathsome about torturing helpless creatures for fun and profit. And evidence of torture is what investigators found on July 8, when federal and local authorities working in teams across eight states staged the largest raid in history against the underground dogfighting racket. Twenty-six people were arrested (five of whom are scheduled to be sentenced to as much as five years in prison on Dec. 8 in St. Louis, Mo.), and more than 500 dogs were rescued, most of them pit bull terriers...
...Notes of culture clash ring everywhere I wander in the vast construction zones that by the end of this year will turn a pristine stretch of virgin forest and grassland into one of the world's largest nickel-extraction sites. On the palm-fringed coast of Basamuk Bay, where the Ramu refinery will be situated, a chatty Beijing-born building engineer tells me that before the Chinese arrived, "the natives were completely uncivilized and running around almost naked." I voice my doubts, telling him that I've just talked to a nearby villager who described a PowerPoint presentation she recently...
...Nestled in one of the most backward parts of one of the world's least developed nations, the Ramu mine has emerged as an acute example of resentment against China Inc. In 2004 P.N.G. Prime Minister Michael Somare returned home from Beijing, triumphant at having snared the country's largest foreign-investment project to date. The euphoria was short-lived. Landowners brandished slingshots and announced they wouldn't sign off on their tribal territory being used for mineral extraction, no matter what document was signed in China's Great Hall of the People. Environmentalists cried foul over plans to deposit...
...many Papua New Guineans, it's not surprising that their nation stands on the front lines of China's global campaign. Located on the eastern half of the world's second largest island, P.N.G. is the most linguistically diverse region of the world, with at least 800 distinct local languages spoken by just 6.5 million people. Yet despite the tribal diversity, the nation is unified in at least one aspect: suspicion of foreign exploitation of its plentiful resources, ranging from natural gas and timber to fisheries and gold. Tensions exploded in the 1990s on the P.N.G. island of Bougainville, where...
...Taliban. Desertion rates are high - 1 in 4 soldiers trained last year, by some accounts. So are rates of drug addiction. Most important, the most effective elements of the military are dominated by ethnic Tajiks, which does little to help win support of the Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic group and the one among which the insurgency is based. Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan had no powerful army or strong state before the U.S. went in - nor does it have the oil wealth that allows Iraq to pay for its own armed forces. There's also the question of whether they...