Word: soiled
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...after CIA officials passed along Zubaydah's accusations to Riyadh and Islamabad. Washington, reports Posner, was shocked when Zubaydah claimed that "9/11 changed nothing" about the clandestine marriage of terrorism and Saudi and Pakistani interests, "because both Prince Ahmed and Mir knew that an attack was scheduled for American soil on that day." They couldn't stop it or warn the U.S. in advance, Zubaydah said, because they didn't know what or where the attack would be. And they couldn't turn on bin Laden afterward because he could expose their prior knowledge. Both capitals swiftly assured Washington that...
...cases, Lakhani's is both more surprising (it happened on U.S. soil) and less menacing (he never came close to either a terrorist or a weapon). According to a criminal complaint filed in Newark federal court last week, Lakhani first came to the FBI's attention in 2001 when an informant posing as the representative of a Somali terrorist group asked about getting a shoulder-fired missile. Lakhani's response: "It can be done." In July, after the FBI had wired $86,500 to Lakhani's alleged suppliers, he met in Moscow with two Russians who inserted themselves into...
...patchiness in the landscape that once minimized the danger of horrific conflagrations like the infamous Hayman fire of 2002. In a single day, it is sobering to recall, the Hayman fire flared across some 60,000 acres in Denver's watershed, torching the crowns of trees and cooking the soil. Among the casualties were most of the 300-to-600-year-old ponderosa pines on a 7,500-acre site that Kaufmann has closely studied. It was a beautiful site, he says, ungrazed and unlogged. The only problem was that fuel loads were off-scale because a good fire...
...forests where frequent, low-severity fires are the rule, the possibility that thinning may have unintended consequences merits careful consideration. Among other things, thinning can open forests to drying winds, making branches and needles even more flammable. It can expose pristine areas to vehicle and foot traffic that compacts soil and facilitates the spread of exotic grasses and weeds. And then there are all the other considerations, ranging from the aesthetic (what a forest should look like after it's thinned) to the practical (what to do with all the small-diameter trees a massive thinning program would generate...
...biggest hauls--are taking place in California. As enforcement tightens along U.S. borders, especially since 9/11, it is getting harder to transport drugs into America. So Mexican traffickers have turned to creating vast marijuana plantations Stateside, that much closer to their main customers. Thanks to a mild climate, rich soil and a lengthy, March-to-October growing season, California cultivators routinely produce 10-ft.-high specimens worth up to $4,000 each. Some of these California pot farms stretch over several hundred acres and have as many as 50,000 plants. Last year 420,000 pot plants with a street...