Word: railroads
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...North Korean government in the past has executed captured refugees, but it does so inconsistently. Pyongyang sends some for extended stays in the country's horrific prisons. Aid groups and people active in the so-called underground railroad, which tries to move refugees into China and eventually to safety in Seoul, say the executions this week were probably meant to deter those fleeing because food is scarce. To North Koreans, the period just before the spring barley harvest is known as "barley hill." In the past, failure to get over the "hill" has meant death by starvation, particularly during...
...past few years, Indian Railways (IR) itself was sunk in a languorous snore. The state-owned company, the monopoly owner-operator of the country's rail system, runs 12,000 trains a day over 39,000 miles (62,750 km) of routes, making it the world's largest railroad under a single administration. It was also notorious for being slow, inefficient and requiring constant government bailouts. But over the past six years, India's most important form of transport - "the lifeline of the nation" as it is often called - has undergone a remarkable turnaround. In its fiscal year ending March...
...plays into the sick myth of the brilliant serial killer. The evil genius with a sadistic streak, who plays mind games with his victims and the police, has replaced the criminal mastermind of old dime novels. Instead of tying the heroine to the railroad tracks (these days, the train would never arrive), he straps them into Rube Goldberg contraptions that slowly rip their fingernails off and tear their dignity to shreds. We live in a cruel world, but this is one area of criminality where fiction has long outstripped fact. According to the folks at Wikipedia - and those obsessive list...
...persuade my father to let me go on this particular trip. We went down to Ruapehu, and I can remember it just as clearly as when it happened. Our train from Auckland arrived at the National Park station and there was snow everywhere, there was snow on the railroad line and there was snow on the trees. It was a bright moonlit night, and the moonlight was a brilliant, marvelous sight to me and it was really the most exciting thing that ever happened to me up to that time - us rushing around skiing. I found I was reasonably energetic...
...depths of Kibera, where few outsiders dare to visit, charred barricades of trash and tires still litter the streets, and wrecks of cars now block the railroad tracks made famous in The Constant Gardener, the Ralph Fiennes movie that was filmed there in 2004. The damage to the area has been so bad that it is impossible to find water to drink or even a bottle of Coca Cola to purchase. Despite their support of Odinga, some residents wonder whether their rage was worthwhile...