Word: soils
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Goaded into action by mounting criticism from the U.S., the Pakistani military last week launched an offensive against the Taliban on its own soil. But it remains unclear whether the goals of the offensive are limited to containing the militants' most recent advances, rather than reversing their steady gains of the past year. The country's President, meanwhile, ahead of a trip to Washington, told foreign journalists that as far as his intelligence agencies were aware, Osama bin Laden was dead - though he readily admitted that they had no proof. The rituals recalled the days when General turned President Pervez...
...when swine flu finally arrived on Chinese soil last week, the country's response was forceful, but also tinged with panic. And it has prompted complaints that the aggressive precautionary measures have unfairly singled out Mexicans. When AeroMexico Flight 098, the first flight out of Mexico to China since the H1N1 outbreak, arrived in Shanghai in the early morning of April 30, the 25-year-old Mexican tourist who became China's swine flu patient showed no signs of illness. "He denied having come into close contact with any suspicious case of swine flu within the previous week or having...
...Still, even for cash flush traffickers, these narco-tunnels are not small undertakings. The Otay Mesa tunnel could easily have cost more than a million dollars; several hundred truckloads would have been needed to carry away the excavated soil. Covert tunneling entails more security risks that cost extra to conceal. On top of that, US officials believe they caught the latest sophisticated tunnel soon after it came online...
...Back at the Mexico-Texas border, the new fence does include some underground sensors. But in reality, it basically stitches together currently available commercial technology which experts acknowledge is far from adequate to detect stealth tunneling. The overall problem is that soil conditions vary widely and some environments pose particular challenges. Acoustical and electromagnetic techniques, for instance, are seriously compromised in urban environments, which are noisy and have lots of other metal around. That's important because most tunnels so far have been found in or near cities, which provide the "cover" to help obscure the infrastructure needed, like warehouses...
...fact that kangaroos run free helps keep their meat cheap. Because there's no need for complex infrastructure, feed or veterinary care, it costs 20-30% less than beef. Kangaroos also do less damage to Australian soil than millions of hard-hoofed cows and sheep. And unlike ruminants, which produce gases that contribute 11% of Australia's greenhouse-gas emissions, kangaroos are naturally low greenhouse-gas emitters. The industry got a boost last fall when Ross Garnaut, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's top climate-change adviser, issued a global-warming report urging Australians to chuck their beef and lamb...