Word: vast
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...will have an easy act to follow, according to those for whom the job-holder serves. Jim Nicholson resigned the post Tuesday amid widespread criticism by veterans groups of his 29-month tenure. They urged the President to replace him with a strong advocate who has knowledge of the vast VA bureaucracy, health care and the growing complexity of the military. "We hope for somebody who knows their primary allegiance is to the veteran and not to the Administration or anybody else," said Paul Rieckhoff of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America...
...million, which includes operations of Vatican City and of the Church's diplomatic corps. The income comes both from individual donations directly to the Pope, called Peter's Pence, which nearly doubled to $102 million last year, and from contributions from dioceses around the world, which take in the vast majority of donated funds from parishioners. Ultimately though, the actual net worth of the worldwide Church, over which the Pope always holds the last word, is indeed vastly greater than the Vatican operating budget would indicate. Indeed, simply weighing the value of certain works of art inside St. Peter...
...Chinese government doesn't entirely disagree. At the urging of the U.S., the country has undertaken vast reforms of its banking sector over the past five years, including opening up the system to foreign banks offering debit cards. But officials remain cautious about letting consumer debt grow too fast, and have maintained safeguards such as low credit limits. Wang Huaqing, assistant chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, recently told the Washington Post that such decisions come from reports of people taking out loans to speculate in the stock market or on real estate, adding the indebtedness of young Americans...
...also scant attention to populating malls with the right mix of shops. Alan Liu, Shanghai-based managing director of Colliers International's North Asia practice, says most try to attract upscale brands. "Everyone thinks they need Prada, Gucci, Fendi in every project, even smaller ones," Liu says. "Well, the vast majority of customers won't spend their money on upmarket products like that." Indeed, at Beijing's Shin Kong Place recently, office worker Zhang Ting, 28, called the center's many high-end international brands "prohibitively expensive." While hundreds of local office workers like Zhang crowded the downtown mall...
...great scientific discovery late last month. An expedition of 50 scientists that spent 45 days aboard the Rossia nuclear ice-breaker found that an underwater ridge (the Lomonosov ridge) directly links Russia's Arctic coast to the North Pole. This, they insist, surely guarantees Russia's rights over a vast Polar territory that also happens to contain some 10 billion tons of oil and natural gas deposits...