Nearly 20 years ago, construction of the highway started with optimism and promise. In late 2002, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) hired the Louis Berger Group (LBG), a New Jersey-based engineering company, to handle the project; with an end-of-2003 deadline set by the White House, the expected cost was $300 million. But the highway’s path through hard, ambush-ready badlands pushed engineers and hundreds of road workers to the limit, and made them easy targets. In a three-month period in late 2003, a Turkish LBG subcontractor was kidnapped, another was shot, and two Indian road workers were abducted; two American road superintendents survived an attack near Kandahar in which one was shot in the head. A total of 40 people died during Highway 1 construction in 2003, according to Andrew Natsios, a former USAID administrator. “We paid for the highway not just in dollars and cents, but in blood,” he writes in a history of the project. “The … [Read more...] about Highway to Hell: A Trip Down Afghanistan’s Deadliest Road
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International Insider: Netflix By Numbers; Cannes Question Marks; Epic Games’ Movie Push; Bye-Bye ‘Peaky Blinders’
Related Story International Insider: BBC Studios' Stuttering CEO Search; BAFTA Voting; Netflix's UK Reality Show Binge But but but: The headline growth in subs masked something International Insider spotted in the detail of Netflix’s shareholder letter. Netflix’s subscriber growth actually slowed in EMEA, despite skyrocketing streaming during lockdown and record levels of investment in the UK, where it spent $1B on shows including The Crown and The Witcher. Europe, Middle East and Africa subs rose 29% to 66.7M in 2020, which was a contraction on the growth rate of 37% the year before, when Netflix first started breaking out territory-specific data. By contrast, the U.S., Canada, and Asia-Pacific all grew at a faster rate than in 2019. It begs the question: Have we hit peak Netflix in some international territories? … [Read more...] about International Insider: Netflix By Numbers; Cannes Question Marks; Epic Games’ Movie Push; Bye-Bye ‘Peaky Blinders’
Pixar’s ‘Soul’ Records Historic Nielsen Streaming Win In Christmas Bow On Disney+
The Office, which crushed all other titles in overall 2020 streaming, has been a major force in the weekly charts as Netflix subscribers get in their final binges. Starting January 1, the sitcom began streaming exclusively on NBCUniversal’s Peacock under a five-year, $500 million licensing deal. Peacock offers the first two seasons on its free, ad-supported tier, with the remaining seven seasons available on Peacock Premium, which costs $5 a month for most subscribers. … [Read more...] about Pixar’s ‘Soul’ Records Historic Nielsen Streaming Win In Christmas Bow On Disney+