Word: gifts
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Billionaire George Soros wants to show you his softer side, but his latest philanthropic initiative is a bit of a head snapper. Soros is announcing today a $35 million donation to benefit underprivileged New York State children to the tune of $200 each. Literally. His gift will help fund a program dubbed "Back to School New York" and will allow the state to access about $140 million additional dollars in stimulus funds that are available to programs that fund needy families. A one-off donation, Soros' largesse is supposed to help kids purchase back-to-school supplies, though some critics...
...Pashtun from Kandahar, the doctor is more often associated with Panshir because of his close relationship with the late Panshiri mujahedin commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, who not only helped defeat the Soviets but was also the Taliban's most effective enemy. Massoud was assassinated, some say as a gift from al-Qaeda to the Taliban, by suicide bombers posing as TV journalists on Sept. 9, 2001. Massoud has been the cornerstone of Abdullah's campaign: his image shadows that of Abdullah's on many campaign posters, and before Abdullah spoke at last week's rally, he visited Massoud's tomb...
...ones. On Nov. 2, 1920, Warren Harding returned from a golfing excursion to find 55 small pink candles on a frosted white cake. Then he sat back to await the election returns - and learned he had been elected President. On May 8, 1945, Harry Truman got an even better gift for his 61st birthday: Germany surrendered in World War II. As the rest of the U.S. celebrated V-E day, Truman shared a cake with secretaries, aides and close friends. With precedents like that, no wonder Obama is working today. See a TIME health-care poll...
...Corazon Aquino's life lent itself to maxims, but two hard-nosed ones seem particularly worth pointing out. First, political sainthood is a gift from heaven with a Cinderella deadline - once past midnight, you are a pumpkin. Second, personal virtues are never a guarantee of effective or successful governance. What was truly shocking about Aquino's tumultuous six-year term as President of the Philippines was that those maxims proved untrue. Midnight always threatened Aquino but never struck; and she was a good woman whose goodness alone, at the very end, was what proved enough, if only by an iota...
Ensor drew lessons in form and color from Turner, Courbet and Manet, but the spirit of his work, the mad afflatus of his gift, owes more to the Germans. His devils are inherited from Bosch and Brueghel. His taste for the grotesque traces back to Grünewald. He, in turn, would hand on his caustic vision of humanity to the German Expressionists, younger artists like Emil Nolde and Ernst Kirchner who saw the possibilities in his combination of sour disposition and strident palette...