11.   Canals offered a conduit to foreign plants and fish while drying out vast stretches of saw-grass marsh, allowing melaleuca trees to invade.

12.   Dozens of ships now ring vast stretches of the Horn of Africa in an attempt to block al-Qaida fighters from seeking refuge in Somalia or Yemen.

13.   Earlier this century, Ecuador lost a vast stretch of land along the border to Peru, and claims the agreement conceding this land to Peru is not valid.

14.   For vast stretches of time, nothing happens at all while spaceships, luminous and logical, maneuver, drift and land.

15.   He has had seven children in all, yet he has traveled his entire life, leaving home for vast stretches of time.

16.   Hurst wanted to fly to Canada again and reacquaint himself with the places he knows, visit old friends, soar over vast stretches of wilderness.

17.   In Maine, though, there are still vast stretches of undeveloped land.

18.   In the vast stretches of Rocky Mountain and Plains states, a more secure border would mean trying to close an open prairie.

19.   In the Japanese disaster last week, soil underlying vast stretches of the Kobe waterfront turned soft and flowed like fluid -- what scientists call liquefaction.

20.   Isolation amid the vast stretches of Arabian desert is the first line of defense at the Prince Sultan Air Base.