Word: rice
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...will have to travel. The snakehead has promised Little Lin a real tourist visa to Russia, then a clandestine overland trip through Ukraine, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Germany and onward to England. Little Lin knows he will have to hide in vans and safe houses and subsist on rice gruel. But he is optimistic. Someone from his village recently arrived safely in England after using the same snakehead he has contacted. "It's very safe," he insists. "Bad things can happen here...
...Often, along their way from Eastern and Western Europe, the migrants - sometimes 50 at a time - are herded into safe houses where they must wait for the right conditions to continue their trip. Besides packets of instant noodles and a rice cooker, there's not much in the way of furnishings. "Staying there is the toughest part," says the snakehead. "When you're in the house, it's easy to get depressed because you have time to think about your family and the things that might go wrong." He estimates that 10% of people crack. They are taken...
...enough to play games of pool with his friends and occasionally treat himself to a seafood feast. Still, Fujian is a place which young men leave, so Big Lin made preparations in 1997 to go abroad, too. More than anything, he recalls, he wanted to see more than the rice paddies, potato fields and squat factories of his hometown. "I wanted to make lots of money," he says, "but I also wanted to have fun and see the world...
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this week persuaded skeptical Congressional leaders to allow the U.S. to spend $43 million beefing up Palestinian security forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas. She countered Congressional concerns over aid reaching terrorists now that Abbas has bucked the U.S. by joining with Hamas in a national unity government, pointing out that the money would be spent on securing borders into Gaza and strengthening the Palestinian security force responsible for stopping weapons being smuggled into the territory...
...million will mostly be devoted to training and equipping Abbas's 4,000-strong Presidential Guard, whose primary responsibilities are to protect the president and visiting dignitaries - such as Secretary Rice herself - and to guard the crossings into the Palestinian territory of Gaza at Rafah and Karni. But some Western envoys fear that strengthening Abbas' forces could help unravel the unity government. International observers and Palestinians claim that Abbas' Praetorian guard was hardly neutral during the recent civil conflict that wracked the Palestinian territories as gunmen from Fatah and Hamas traded fire for days on end: The president's forces...