Word: familiar
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Soon after terrorists struck Mumbai on Wednesday, Israeil Defense Minister Ehud Barak offered to send help to India. "The attacks are part of a global wave of terror, which Israel is quite familiar with," Barak said. But India declined the assistance. Some Israeli officials voiced criticism over the way that Indian forces immediately began firing at the gunmen, rather than gathering intelligence on their adversary, or attempting to enter into negotiations with them first. Meanwhile, in India, rumors circulated that the Israelis had indeed been part of the rescue operation, a notion that may have been kick-started...
Africa has seen the likes of Congo rebel leader Laurent Nkunda before. The story of the revolutionary who storms out of the hinterland in a lightning advance and seizes power is a familiar one, from Nkunda's native Democratic Republic of Congo to the Comoros Islands. Sometimes, as with Paul Kagame in Rwanda or with Yoweri Museveni in Uganda, the new leaders are an improvement. But in other cases, as with Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe or Laurent Kabila, the assassinated father of the current Congolese president, they quickly impose the autocracy and corruption they were initially fighting...
...cuts: The middle class will get a tax cut quickly, say several Democrats familiar with the planning. There may also be a payroll tax break to speed some extra cash to all. Obama may even postpone his plans to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and delay any tax hike on top-tier earners until 2011, when the cuts expire under current...
...More urgent is the need to funnel cash directly from Washington to states so that local legislators don't rush to cut spending on Medicaid as state tax receipts dry up in the recession. "Absent some relief there, you'll get Medicaid budgets slashed," says a senior Democratic aide familiar with the plans...
...themselves. Should there be rebellion in the streets in Havana, there's still a state militancy that could bring blood to the Malecón. But the new generation of Cubans both here and abroad are of a milder bent, with gentler aspirations. A cabdriver I met launched into a familiar refrain: most of his family fled to Tampa when Fidel Castro stole their lands. So was he--or his family in Florida--waiting to take the land back, to evict those who live there now? "No," he said, "we're all tired of thinking about fighting." His younger relatives...