Word: valleyful
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Haji Zahir is one of three local commanders intent on winning the $25 million bounty on Osama bin Laden. Accompanying Zahir's fighters on their hunt, I rummaged through what was probably the last of bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan. It was in the Milawa Valley section of Tora Bora, in the shadow of the majestic White Mountains. Just below it lie a series of man-made caves stuffed with arms and weapons, while above it is a ridge with more caves where bin Laden was thought to be hiding...
Strewn across the terraced slopes that climb the valley were torn strips of Arabic training manuals, bits of a Chinese-Arabic dictionary, some shreds of clothing, a set of parallel exercise bars and a shooting target printed by the National Rifle Association. Trees blown from the earth lay with their roots twisted into clumps like charred driftwood. Bomb craters 50 ft. across and 20 ft. deep were filled with rubble and crossbeams. That the caves still existed was a wonder. They had been bombarded for days. Yet clearly anybody who had taken refuge inside the caves would have survived...
Having taken the territory, Haji Zahir's men withdrew from the valley, leaving several of their own dead. But that night the al-Qaeda fighters sneaked back and slipped written messages into the stiff hands of the corpses. A commander named Anatullah found them a day later as his men carried the bodies out on woven beds. "We are Muslims, you are Muslims," he recalls the words on the notes. "Don't fight us. We are waiting for American troops to attack, and then you will see who wins...
Wall Street's recent drug addiction strikes some as ironic. Robert Erwin, CEO of the Vaca Valley, Calif., biotech firm Large Scale Biology, recalls being told all last year that investors were interested only in hearing about his company's technology. "Now the advice I get is, 'Don't talk about your technology. People only want to hear about your products...
...security and biotech. That was the conclusion of a recent survey by consultants Deloitte & Touche. Biotech pulled in some $3 billion in VC funding over the first three quarters of this year--a third more than it did in the same period last year, according to the Silicon Valley consultancy Recombinant Capital. A San Diego-based company, Syrrx, even found itself turning investors away early this year after it had raised $55 million in its second round of funding...