Word: vast
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...opium-growing region in Afghanistan, which produces close to 90% of the world's heroin. While the U.S. and Afghan governments have announced measures to curb poppy cultivation, a visit to Helmand reveals how challenging such a campaign would be. Just outside Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, lies a vast expanse of poppy farms. A glut has driven down the market price, but the flower is still the country's most profitable crop, according to farmers. Officials predict this year's yield in Helmand will be double last year...
With a University as vast and decentralized as our own, it is especially important that our president be acutely attuned to the complex needs of a diverse constituency—something outgoing University President Lawrence H. Summers seems to have failed to do. This is particularly important to graduate students who, like professors, are intensely focused on a specific field of study and want a president who is sympathetic to their niche. An ideal candidate to replace Summers would possess the professional tact and sensitivity required to bridge disciplinary boundaries rather than exacerbate divisions by playing favorites with certain departments...
...this procedure, there are still people who believe that a woman should have the right to choose to have a partial-birth abortion. They argue that this procedure is rare, it only accounts for 1% of abortions performed. Indeed, 2,200 partial-birth abortions are performed per year, the vast majority on healthy mothers with healthy fetuses. Yet the fact that something rarely occurs is not a valid argument for why it should be permitted, if it is otherwise morally reprehensible. Still, supporters of partial-birth abortion insist the Court has no right to make a judgment call that...
...carrying it out. Some Shi'ite mobs last week stopped people in the street and demanded to see their ID cards, looking for Sunni names. Each sect regards some names as taboo, usually because they are associated with hated figures from history. But that too is imprecise: the vast majority of Muslim names are used by both sects. In the end, as is often the case in sectarian wars, many of the victims of last week's violence were simply fingered by their neighbors...
...cultural minority in all of those societies, often suffering vicious repression, but have enjoyed de facto independence in northern Iraq under U.S. protection since the 1991 Gulf War. Although they participate in Iraqi national politics and one of their key leaders, Jalal Talabani, is currently Iraq's president, the vast majority of Iraqi Kurds have signaled their desire for formal independence from Iraq. The Kurds are predominantly Sunni Muslim, although there is a Shiite minority, but Kurdish identity politics are dominated by secular nationalism, although an Islamist party made a surprisingly strong showing in January's election...