Word: powder
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Nothing is safe from her depredations, not even endangered species. Government agents recently rounded up a band of poachers accused of slaughtering hundreds of black bears in the Northeastern U.S., ripping out their gallbladders and selling them for profit. The gallbladders are dried and ground into powder and sent to Asia, where they are sold for as much as $540 an oz. for "medicinal" purposes. Men who take a tiny pinch of the powder are convinced that it enhances their libido. They believe that if you devour parts of a powerful animal, you will absorb its sexual vitality...
...attributes of genius. He has his own tour bus, separate from the rest of the band and crew, "because I need windows," and because he rarely listens to music, which is in heavy supply aboard the other R.E.M. vehicles. He keeps a bottle of Evian water mixed with herbal powder close at hand and claims he can, as some animals do, anticipate earthquakes days before they occur. His house in Athens has no TV and no phone. Says drummer Berry: "The three of us are just as average as you can get, but Michael is obviously an unusual person...
Nestled in a tidy, working-class area just three miles away is Mandela House, a residential program founded by Thomas over a year ago for crack- addicted pregnant women. In a cozy five-bedroom home that smells of baby powder and food cooking on the stove, fingers that recently clutched glass crack pipes now rest upon distended bellies. From a back room floats the sound of a baby's cry and a soft, throaty voice singing, "Runaway child, runnin' wild, / . . . go back home where you belong./ You're lost in the great big city...
...thrives under the green canopy of the country's jungles. By the time the ten-day campaign ended last week, Operation Primavera had become the most successful bust of coke labs in Colombian history, netting a total of 26 plants capable of producing 6.6 tons of the addictive white powder a week. Though the plants never achieved that level of production, the potential output is about three times the demand of the U.S. market. Boasted a senior police official: "This is a bullet to the heart of the cocaine mafia...
...Primavera were stored in standing tanks or 55-gal. drums. In some cases the drums were stacked 15 ft. high, creating Andean peaks of testimony to the proportions of the smuggling operation. Ethyl ether, for example, is essential to the final processing of cocaine base into a white hydrochloride powder. The manufacture of ethyl ether has been outlawed in Colombia, and importation is closely regulated. A 55-gal. drum of ethyl ether that sells for $500 in the U.S. fetches more than $12,000 in Colombia. Says Alfonso Barragan, president of the Colombian Society of Chemical Engineers: "The Colombian black...