THE hope Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's president, nurtured for the huge gathering, or jirga, held in a vast tent in Kabul this month was that it would give him the national support needed to start a peace process with the Taliban.
Groups of diverse social and political pedigree took advantage of the huge gathering to advance their agendas, too.
'We have decided that for the good for all communities in our city it would be best if we cancel the huge gathering in the city park".
There was a steady buildup all week to the huge gathering at Invesco Field, and then an explosion of rhetoric, fireworks and galas after Mr. Obama's speech on Thursday night.
In the comments on our coverage of Thursday's "day of action" for Occupy Wall Street, many of you wondered – that's a polite word for it – why we didn't provide crowd estimates for the huge gathering that thronged Foley Square near City Hall on Thursday night and flowed over the Brooklyn Bridge.
President Clinton opened the meeting of world leaders at the United Nations, urging the huge gathering to prepare the institution for a new age in which international forces would have to reach regularly and rapidly inside national boundaries to protect threatened people.
The prospect of that huge gathering has added a sense of urgency to Manchester's revival, accelerating its efforts begun decades ago to eradicate the worst of its industrial-era slum housing and, over the past few years, to regenerate its blighted urban wastelands.
