Word: communal
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Born within 30 days of each other in 1931, the two men could scarcely be more different in background and personality. Yeltsin's childhood was a grim struggle for survival in a one-room communal hut in the Ural industrial town of Sverdlovsk. At six, he was looking after his two siblings, boiling potatoes and washing dishes. "It was a fairly joyless time," he recalls, possibly also because his father frequently thrashed him with a leather belt...
...reason for this longevity may be that Yemenites always find time for a communal chew of kat, a mood-altering plant whose effect seems similar to that of the Andean coca leaf. Horwitz also makes the kat scene, but the effect soon dissipates in the tensions of Cairo, Khartoum and Baghdad. In 1988, he notes, the popular joke in the Iraqi capital was that there were 32 million Iraqis: 16 million people and 16 million pictures of Saddam Hussein. This count included the President's face on wristwatches and ashtrays, and an unnerving number of government officials who are Saddam...
...between followers of the A.N.C. and the Zulu- based Inkatha movement, headed by Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Instead of inspiring a new era of peace, Mandela's return has seen the fighting spread to Soweto and other townships encircling Johannesburg. In 1990 nearly 3,500 were killed in black communal violence, the worst year's toll in modern South African history...
They also nurture communal outrage at the bureaucracy of the Veterans Administration, their latter-day Viet Cong, for making benefits difficult to obtain. Adrian Yurong, 45, who served about a year and a half with the 25th Infantry Division near the Viet Cong stronghold of Cu Chi, has been denied benefits because his job description shows he was a radar operator. Yurong, now known simply as Nano, was pressed into service, he says, as an infantryman throughout his tour. The VA grants that he has PTSD but says he must have contracted it elsewhere. Such arguments enrage V.F.W. activist Cowan...
Arab families faced with terrified youngsters have been left to muddle through on their own. The curfews have made it hard for welfare agencies or the mosques to offer communal assistance. In contrast, Israelis are making a major effort to help ease rising anxiety among their young. Newspaper columns % are offering helpful hints to parents. On the Israeli edition of Sesame Street, a porcupine named Kippi admits that he is frightened of missiles. A new hot line started by the Ministry of Education handles about 1,500 phone calls a day. Some youngsters simply seek a friendly ear in which...