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...alphabet soup of troubled Government loan programs has added three new letters: FHA. Housing Secretary Jack Kemp contended last week that the largest Federal Housing Administration fund is running out of money. The Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund, which guarantees about 690,000 home loans each year, has suffered a high rate of defaults because of sloppy supervision and falling real estate values. The fund's net worth has plunged from $8 billion in 1979 to $2.6 billion currently. Kemp has outlined a five-point plan to keep the fund solvent. His proposal would improve management and increase the premiums...
...respects, the changes speak more of a revived sense of nationalism than of a hunger for democracy. The descendants of Genghis Khan are rediscovering traces of an identity that was systematically blurred during the decades of Soviet domination. Mongolian script, abandoned in the 1940s in favor of the Cyrillic alphabet, is again being taught. The image of the Mongol hero is back in vogue: a nearly completed joint-venture hotel is named after Genghis Khan, and his visage adorns the label of a local vodka that is bottled / for export. An elaborate memorial to the warrior will soon be constructed...
...rebel; one lewd strand of hair snakes down to his cheek. He's an orphan; his parents, the notorious Alphabet Bomber (Airport, Barber shop, Car wash, Drug store . . .) and spouse, were electrocuted together long before he turned teen. He's Wade Walker, and when the world that has branded him a juvenile delinquent weighs too heavily on his high school hellcat soul, his eye moistens with a single salty tear. So the kids call him Cry-Baby. Says Wade defiantly: "That's Mr. Baby...
...eaves of Buddhist temples share suburbia with the flat roofs of ranch-style homes. Asian shopping malls are stocked with everything from disposable diapers to dried sea cucumbers that sell for up to $1,000 per lb. Signs in English and Spanish compete with those in the Korean Hankul alphabet and in Chinese ideograms. When Roman letters appear, they are often tricked out in the rococo accents of Vietnamese...
Alongside freedom of worship, Muslim citizens of the Central Asian republics are becoming more assertive about culture. Many are demanding a return to the original Arabic script of their respective languages. The Cyrillic alphabet was forced on the Central Asian republics by Stalin in 1939 to cut Muslims off from their rich cultural heritage and to exacerbate relatively minor linguistic differences among the four main Turkic groups of the area. Today, privately run Arabic-language schools are flourishing in Tashkent and other major cities, while Tashkent's five Arabic-language middle schools are crammed to capacity. At the Tashkent...