Rose plants to replace poppies in Kabul
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SOFIA: Farmers in the southeastern Afghan province of Ningharhar are to turn from opium production to instead produce rose oil, a key component of perfume, by planting 40,000 Bulgarian rose plants, a report ...
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BRUSSELS, Feb 15 (IPS) - A floral display of sorts was being assembled to  greet diplomats entering one of the key European Union  institutions Friday morning. Rows of multi-coloured cardboard  flowers, all bearing smiley faces, were starting to throng the  courtyard of Justus Lipsius, the building where meetings of the  EU's 27 governments are held. In their plastic holders, the  fake flowers kept swinging from side to side like hyperactive  pendulums.
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By JOSHUA GOODMAN  BOGOTA, Colombia - It's probably the last thing most people think about when buying roses - by the time the bright, velvety flowers reach your Valentine, they will have been sprayed, rinsed and dipped in a battery of potentially lethal chemicals.
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A hi-tech bomb, similar to the ones used by militants in Iraq, is found in the Afghan capital, Kabul.
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Afghan President Hamid Karzai (1st R) meets with three United Nations workers Philippine diplomat Angelito Nayan (1st L), Kosovan Shqipe Hebibi (2nd L) and Annetta Flanigan from Northern Ireland (3rd L) at the Afghan presidential palace in Kabul, Nov 24
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LONDON - Flowers could someday sprout from biodegradable cellphones, say researchers who have found a way to embed a seed inside the plastic.
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The United Nations is expected to declare a &quot;significant increase&quot; in the cultivation of opium poppies in Afghanistan stemming from weak eradication, alternative income and interdiction programs, the US State Department said.
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KABUL, Afghanistan - Days after Taliban fighters overran Musa Qala, a US commander pledged that Western troops would take it back. Nine months later, the town is still Taliban territory, a symbol of the West's struggles to control the poppy-growing south.
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Seems that folks at the Agency for International Development are not rushing to fill 23 excellent jobs in garden spots such as Iraq and Afghanistan. And if no one volunteers soon, AID Administrator    Andrew S. Natsios  said in an agency-wide e-mail Friday, the agency will order people to fill those posts.
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The big election result in Afghanistan on October 9 will be in Kabul, not Canberra. Christina Lamb reports. TO enter the Kabul presidential palace for a meeting with Hamid Karzai involves passing through four
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Text of report by Afghan state radio on 11 December  Afghan deputy minister for counternarcotics yesterday announced his disagreement with the idea of spraying the poppy plant fields with herbicide.
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With profits from this spring's record opium crop fueling a broad Taliban offensive, Afghan authorities say they are considering a once unthinkable way to deal with the scourge: spraying poppy fields with herbicide.
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BALKH, Afghanistan  - As Afghanistan struggles to cut its raging opium production, aid workers try to find alternative crops, but for some former poppy farmers the choice was easy -- they planted marijuana instead.
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The lives of British soldiers in Afghanistan are being put at risk because failure to develop a coherent strategy for eradicating the country's opium poppies has led to the Taliban forming an alliance with heroin traders, a highly critical parliamentary report warns today.
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Opium poppy cultivation shot up a whopping 61 percent in Afghanistan this year in a setback for US and NATO efforts to clamp down on the country's illegal drug industry, according to new figures released by the White House.
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SHEIKHABAD, Afghanistan -- In a small, sunlit parlor last week, 20 little girls seated on rush mats sketched a flower drawn on the blackboard. In a darker interior room, 15 slightly older girls memorized passages from the Koran, reciting aloud. Upstairs was a class of teenage girls, hidden from public view.
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By Jan Riggenbach  With the last of the paste tomatoes and bush beans picked, the plants are ready to pull. In the flower garden, tubs quickly fill with yellowing leaves, faded flowers and declining annuals.