Word: civilizing
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...Cabinet ministers, their clerks and assorted relatives and friends line up patiently to eat in the main dining room of Rajapaksa's official compound. Outside, on the streets of Colombo, he is the all-conquering hero. In May, Rajapaksa's government ended Sri Lanka's 26-year-long civil war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and the capital's broad avenues are dominated by enormous banners glorifying him: "You are a divine gift to the country. May the gods bestow their blessings on you." But here, inside, Rajapaksa seems more like a down-to-earth family...
...barrel-chested rugby fan, Rajapaksa, 63, will need that common touch to bring Sri Lanka to a true and lasting peace between the island nation's Sinhalese majority (which is mostly Buddhist) and Tamil minority (mostly Hindu). The civil war began in earnest in July 1983, after nearly 3,000 Tamils were killed in several days of systematic anti-Tamil violence. It was the low point of what Sri Lanka's Tamils felt had been decades of official discrimination and military repression in Tamil-majority areas in the north and east. The LTTE took up arms in the name...
...their whole lives fighting for the destruction of the Sri Lankan state but are now ministers in Rajapaksa's government. They stood in the buffet line with everyone else, and then quietly sat down to discuss the afternoon's committee meetings over lunch. The real world may be less civil and much more complicated, but at this table there is room for everyone...
...political and economic chaos that the conflict has created. Armed groups frequently force civilians to mine the minerals, extorting taxes and refusing to pay wages. The report quotes one miner from South Kivu: "We are their meat, their animals. We have nothing to say." (See pictures of the civil war in Congo...
...thirds of auto-entrepreneurs are men, who, on average, are age 40. About 33% are salaried employees starting up a sideline business, 25% are unemployed and 6% are retirees. Later this year, the program will take private enterprise to the public sector by opening auto-entrepreneur to civil servants. If it continues at its current pace, the scheme will prove that France not only has a word for entrepreneur, but also a growing army of people it fits. Read "Much Greater Paris...