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ACCRA, Ghana — According to a select group of hormonal Ghanaian men, I am the promised land of sex and green cards that will unfurl upon the mere uttering of "ni hao," rumored to be the universal mating call in Asia. The most popular pickup line I have received is essentially a long string of southeastern Asian countries, question mark. (Korea, for whatever reason, never makes the list.) The grammatical fragment is often accompanied by a look of wide-eyed wonder and teeth slightly bared in what I imagine to be curious lust...
...idea is to identify the big users of government shelters and services and show voters that you can slowly herd them into permanent housing. With its emphasis on tangible gains and more rigorous data, it might as well be called No Transient Left Behind. And it has proven hugely popular with local politicians, like San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, who can boast about their measurable, if small, progress...
...less to do with the state of the conflict than with the political needs of the leaders involved. The Bush Administration is desperate for foreign policy success in a region littered with its failures. President Abbas needs to show that he can deliver through negotiation what his more-popular rivals in Hamas are unable to achieve through violence. As for Olmert, addressing Israelis' long-standing desire to resolve the conflict with their neighbors has helped him stay afloat politically even as his popularity has plunged following his disastrous management of the 2006 war in Lebanon...
...Three other time-sensitive large items remain to be finished this year by Congress: a housing bill that Bush has now, after initially threatening a veto, agreed to sign; reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration; and a yearly extension of popular bipartisan corporate tax cuts. If any of these bills don't make it into law, they too will take priority next year...
...months. "We don't think they will try to fight again, because they are too weak now," says an Interior Ministry official. "If they start, it will be their end." Says Ali Saadi, a medical professor in the Hay al-Banook district, where the Shi'ite militia has been popular and which lies adjacent to Sadr City: "The Mahdi Army was hit hard [by the military operation]. They are very weak these days, and a lot of them escaped to other areas...