expanse

It’s about railroads and bridges carved into untamed expanses of the Pacific Northwest, as well as the sacrifices and growing pains necessary to move the country toward modernity.

In Tawila, hundreds of people have huddled together in makeshift tents in a vast desert expanse, scrounging together what they can to prepare food for their families, AFP video shows.

"Once you go inside the continent, there is nothing. It's just a big, vast expanse of whiteness and there is no life," Tordeur said.

No wonder: With labor costs climbing and the harmful effects of lawn-care chemicals on people and the planet becoming ever-more obvious, the price of maintaining an emerald expanse starts to seem rather steep.

This time, the killings are the work of a closely-drilled and well-armed rebel force that already has established a parallel government to run Darfur, an expanse of western Sudan roughly the size of Spain.