KABUL, November 30 (Online): In an effort to slow drug production in Afghanistan, the U.S. government has paid Afghan farmers $8,000 for potatoes the farmers could not otherwise sell.
Officials with the U.S. provincial reconstruction team for Ghazni said they had paid about $8,240 for 88,000 pounds of potatoes. The potatoes were sent to Afghanis returning from Pakistani refugee camps and to victims of the Pakistan earthquake.
Authorities are trying to convince Afghan farmers not to a grow poppies, which can be made into heroin, and is an important -- if illegal -- cash crop for farmers in the country.
On its submarines Britain has 48 nuclear warheads, each one eight times as powerful as the nuclear bomb that obliterated Hiroshima. Prime Minister Tony Blair theoretically could order the incineration of 384 large cities around the world. A debate is now looming in Britain on the future of nuclear weapons.
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