Word: stretching
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...Mekong is not so unyielding these days. In 2001, Chinese crews, brought in by Southeast Asian governments eager to increase traffic and trade, began blasting and dredging a stretch of the river running from Burma and Laos to Thailand, clearing away islands, reefs and rapids that once blocked the passage of ships. Since then, sleepy Southeast Asian river ports have morphed into boomtowns, with boats from China disgorging cheap electronics, fruits, vegetables and every kind of plastic gadget imaginable. River traffic runs both ways: in December 2006, the first shipment of refined oil chugged up the Mekong bound for energy...
...centuries a drowsy temple town. But when Chinese engineers opened up the river by blasting nearby reefs, trade exploded. Laborers from all three Golden Triangle nations converged on the docks looking for work. A few years ago, only boats carrying less than 100 tons of goods could navigate this stretch of the Mekong - hardly worth the trip. Now, ships can handle triple that amount - and when other reefs are removed in the coming months, they will be able to transport even more. The knock-on effects of the China trade are big, too. A giant casino opened last year...
Religious pilgrims were the first to come here, in the 10th century. In more recent times, golfing pilgrims have flocked to St. Andrews to pay homage to a stretch of weather-beaten land on the edge of the North Sea where the game was invented 600 years ago. When they set off down the first fairway of the Old Course into the prevailing wind, they walk with heads bowed...
...fair bit cooler than the 3,000 degrees reached at the spacecraft's nose and wingtips. Even damaged tiles can usually survive the heating at the aft end of the ship. NASA reports that it caught one bit of good luck in that the breach occurred right over a stretch of the aluminum framework of the ship itself - a bit like damaging a sheet-rock wall directly over one of the wooden beams that holds the wall up, as opposed to the unsupported stretches in between. That indeed is a stroke of good fortune, but less of one than NASA...
...President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Cécilia in freeing six medics who faced execution in Libya on trumped-up murder charges earned cheers from many. But it also generated grousing from E.U. officials who suggest Sarkozy cut in on their low-key negotiations with Tripoli in the final stretch to break the tape himself and get the credit...