Word: pakistan
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...appears he may have been right--or largely so. Recently returned from a Himalayan expedition, French explorer-anthropologist Michel Peissel and British photographer Sebastian Guinness say they have located the gold-digging ants on Pakistan's Dansar plain near the tense 1949 cease-fire line with India. The "ants," it turns out, are actually marmots, cat-size rodents that burrow in a gold-bearing stratum of sandy soil a few feet underground. Peissel believes Herodotus' confusion came from the ancient Persian word for marmot, which means mountain...
...perhaps, although the answer depends largely on how patient you are and how much risk you can stomach. Foreign stocks, especially those traded in hinterlands such as Sri Lanka and Pakistan, are notoriously volatile. But such budding markets also promise far faster growth than anything the silver-haired domestic economy is likely to muster, presenting the tantalizing possibility of such stocks rising an average 20% to 30% a year over long periods. So far, no large schools of U.S. investors are swimming overseas. A vicious bear market that clipped emerging-market stocks by 30% or more in 1994 remains...
...While the move is ominous for the fate of democracy, Leghari had other danger signals to consider. In the past few weeks, protests by the country's main Islamic party had torn into major cities, including Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi. The cry in the streets was corruption. And in Pakistan the figure most often paired with that word is Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto's husband and the Minister of Investment. On Tuesday, Zardari had been detained, and at one point Bhutto was reportedly under military surveillance...
...Zardari were charged with corruption after she was dismissed in 1990. But there was never any conclusive evidence, and Zardari was released on bail after more than a year in prison. So while Leghari mentioned corruption in his letter, he had another more troubling reason for his action. Pakistan is chafing under austerities imposed by the International Monetary Fund, which has refused to release a $600 million standby loan if Islamabad cannot remedy its budget deficit in order to service its $28.6 billion in foreign debt. To that end Bhutto had raised taxes--but her government did not collect enough...
...Abdul Rashid Dostum, a powerful Uzbek warlord, who is with Massoud's forces battling the Taliban near Kabul. The tribal nature of the conflict has always complicated the fighting. Last week the Taliban, mostly ethnic Pashtun, were going house to house in Kabul in search of Tajiks and Uzbeks. Pakistan's meddling can only worsen the hostilities, and the lines of refugees will stretch deep into the winter...