Word: spate
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...kidnapped in broad daylight today in Kabul, a month after two German engineers and their five Afghan colleagues were abducted in nearby Wardak province, and 23 South Korean Christian volunteers were seized from a bus by the Taliban in Ghazni, just 3 hours from the Afghan capital. This spate of kidnappings in and around the capital heralds an alarming trend for foreign nationals working in Afghanistan...
...been eliminated," Nikolai Patrushev, Director of Russia's FSB (the KGB's heir), commented to Interfax wire agency. He has ordered his service to strengthen its control of Russia's sensitive installations. Patrushev said the train bomb was part of a pattern of violence that also included a spate of attacks on security forces and officials in the North Caucasus region around Chechnya...
...booming housing markets in Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange counties had barely felt the chill that hit Miami and Denver from rising inventories, declining prices and slowing sales. But this week's spate of gloomy housing data included ominous reports from the West Coast. Led by an astonishing 799% rise in Los Angeles County, foreclosures in southern California jumped 725% in the second quarter, to a record 9,504, from 1,152 a year ago. The spectacularly bad trend was coupled with news from mega-mortgage lender Countrywide Financial that homeowners with good credit are starting to fall behind...
Meantime, in a telling twist, the spate of suicide bombings in Pakistan seems to have cooled the immediate sense of crisis in Afghanistan. Word on the streets of Kabul is that the suicide bombers from Pakistan's tribal areas who until recently headed west into Afghanistan to train Afghan militants or carry out attacks themselves are now heading east into the cities of Pakistan, where they have new motives and better targets to attack. "Normally the Pakistanis come to Afghanistan, but now they are busier in Pakistan," says Waheed Muzhda, an Afghan political analyst who worked for the foreign ministry...
...Lebanese government is struggling to check a steadily worsening security climate. In the past month alone, Lebanon has witnessed fierce battles in the north between the Lebanese army and the al-Qaeda-inspired militants of Fatah al-Islam, the assassination of an anti-Syrian politician, and a spate of bomb attacks targeting tourist areas, ruining Lebanon's economically crucial summer tourist season before it had even begun. A week ago, militants fired two Katyusha rockets into Israel from south Lebanon, the first such incident since last summer...