21.   In broad daylight, on a main street in the center of town, an armed gang was trying to kidnap a local journalist.

22.   It has a government dominated by Hutus anxious to cling to power, a Tutsi minority fearful of political exclusion, armed gangs selecting their victims on ethnic grounds.

23.   Meanwhile, in California, armed gangs have broken into warehouses and stolen computer hardware worth millions of dollars.

24.   Moscow says Maskhadov has no control over armed gangs numbering in the thousands that conduct raids in neighboring Russian regions and hold hostages for ransom.

25.   The answer, a decade ago, would have been crack cocaine and the heavily armed gangs fighting over the crack trade.

26.   The Front has since split into about a dozen Mafia-like armed gangs.

27.   Two years later, Shevardnadze, a KGB boss in Georgia in the Soviet era, outmaneuvered and arrested armed gangs that made much of the nation lawless.

28.   Under a March peace agreement, the brigade is carrying out joint patrols with the opposition fighters, supposedly to root out renegade armed gangs that roam the countryside.

29.   With armed gangs controlling most roads, robbery is common.

30.   Others may have feared for their lives if they did not bow to political and tribal leaders who wield control with armed gangs.