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Lebanon's anti-drug squad and the handful of soldiers protecting them had an unpleasant surprise last month when they launched an annual raid on fields of ripe hashish in the northern Bekaa Valley. Rather than standing aside meekly while their hashish was ploughed up as in the past, the farmers this year were determined to protect their lucrative crops. "They shot at us with automatic weapons from nearby woods and houses," Colonel Adel Machmouchi, head of Lebanon's Drug Enforcement Bureau, told TIME. "RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] were exploding above our heads and we had to leave...
...largest hashish harvest since the war-torn 1980s when this fertile valley was awash with drug crops. Lebanese police estimate that some 16,000 acres (6,500 hectares) of hashish and a small amount of opium poppies were planted this year on the sun-baked plain of the northern Bekaa. "Lebanese hashish is the best in the world, better than Turkey and Afghanistan," says Ali, a Bekaa farmer standing in his field of knee-high hashish plants, the spiky saw-toothed cannabis leaves swaying gently in the hot breeze. Ali and other hashish farmers interviewed by TIME requested their real...
...move would stand in jarring contrast to guarantees of safety and security given to the Iraqi personally by Petraeus when Hashem surrendered in 2003. Hashem was one of the very few top Iraqis to surrender himself voluntarily to the United States. Petraeus, then commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq, personally arranged his capitulation, guaranteeing his safety and medical treatment. "I officially request your surrender to me," Petraeus wrote in a personal letter to Hashem, noting the general's "reputation as a man of honor and integrity is known throughout this country...
...Malaysia, which switched to gas-fired power plants in recent years, are now turning back to coal. There's no shortage of investors. Despite objections from environmental groups, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) last month agreed to fund the $1 billion, 2,200-megawatt Mong Duong coal plant in northern Vietnam. Greenpeace has urged the ADB to invest in alternative-energy projects instead. But technologies such as wind power aren't advanced enough to meet Vietnam's needs, says Woo Chong Um, the ADB's energy director for sustainable development. "We're trying to keep [Vietnam] as clean as possible...
When President George W. Bush met with the families of fallen northern Nevada soldiers, widow Roberta Stewart, whose Wiccan husband Sgt. Patrick Stewart lost his life in Afghanistan in 2005, was not contacted. Bush later officially apologized for the oversight, but some wondered whether religious discrimination motivated Bush’s inaction...