Word: present
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...bestow their blessings on you." But here, inside, Rajapaksa seems more like a down-to-earth family patriarch, nourished as much by the red rice, jackfruit curry and spicy fried fish as by the praise and demands of the supplicants who interrupt him. At one point, a young couple present him with a stack of betel leaves to be blessed. He chats casually with them; they show off their infant son. (Read "War's End Hasn't Stilled the World's Young Tamil Voices...
...Meanwhile, Bush was running his own traps. He called Jim Sharp, his personal attorney in the Plame case, who had been present when he was interviewed by Fitzgerald in 2004. Sharp was known in Washington as one of the best lawyers nobody knew. A savvy raconteur from Oklahoma who had represented a long list of colorful clients - from Nixon pal Charles G. (Bebe) Rebozo to Sammy Sosa - Sharp had worked quietly for the President for a while before anyone even knew about it. In the meantime, the two men had become friends, spending hours chatting over cigars and near beer...
...ancient Roman ruins, in particular the Roman forum: melancholy. It is beautiful and yet sad. The ruins are majesty fallen; they are things gone and not memorialized, but rather left to simply be. “And look,” one has to think, “present-day Italians, once Romans, once the most powerful people in the world, can’t even get it together to label the rubble...
...scale back in any way. There are 28,500 American troops in Korea right now, and that is a good price for détente on the peninsula. The peace and stability of Seoul, Tokyo, and Shanghai are of great interest to the United States. To this end, the present deployment is a cheaper solution than attempting North Korean regime change, and more effective than placing sanctions on a government that will let its people starve rather than cooperate...
...despite their fierce national pride, under the present circumstances, I think it’s possible that South Koreans will discard their stereotypes of American troops and recognize the benefits of their presence, at least until the North Korean regime stabilizes. The Korean border is 40 kilometers from the Seoul metropolitan area, in which half the population of South Korea lives. Across it, North Korea has around 1.2 million troops—the fifth largest land force in the world, because the Kim regime prioritizes bullets over bread. South Korea presently spends 3 percent of its GDP on defense...