Word: urbaneness
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...devout Buddhist; his reddish brown scarf the color of korakan, a rough grain eaten as the staple diet of poor farmers. Everything about Rajapaksa - his big laugh, his rough-and-ready English, his bejeweled fingers and ink-black hair - marks him as part of the rural bourgeoisie, not the urban élite educated abroad. This is more than just an image. He was elected to Parliament as its youngest member in 1970 and moved slowly up through the ranks of his party while building a base of support in his home district of Hambantota. One minister in his government...
...school districts "strongly consider" a seven-hour day and a 200- to 220-day academic year, which would hew more closely to the schedules in higher-performing Europe and Asia. Although the practice has yet to go mainstream, there's a big push to add school hours in underperforming urban districts. One champion of this movement is Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, who on July 8 introduced the Time for Innovation Matters in Education Act, which would provide federal grants for states and districts to "expand learning time in high-need, high-poverty schools...
Berlin's creaking urban rail network is just another in a series of problems facing the city. Over the past year, there has been a spate of car burnings in the capital, teachers have written public letters to the authorities complaining about the poor standards at city schools, and youth violence has been on the rise. And the city council is struggling for money after running up new debts this year to the tune of $1.3 billion, bringing its debt total to $85 billion...
...have electricity until a few years ago, and most children are the first in their families to attend school. As an English medium school (all subjects are taught in English), it struggles to find teachers that can teach in English, because most qualified instructors live in Bhuj, the nearest urban center, which is 40 kilometers away. Even if teachers are willing to travel the distance, the pay is meager, forcing them to hold a second job after the school day ends. Sadhu Vaswani faces competition for funding and enrollment from other, better-funded Gujarati medium schools...
...trafficking of South American cocaine into Europe. With billions in narcodollars, 'Ndrangheta is constantly on the lookout for ways to invest its ill-gotten cash in legitimate enterprises, explains Alberto Cisterna, a Rome-based magistrate who has long followed the Calabrian Mob. He says that high-profile urban centers are actually considered the best places for crooks to simultaneously hide their illicit wealth and evade taxes. "These criminal organizations see Rome and Milan as bona fide tax havens," says Cisterna. "Its hard for them to hide their wealth in Calabria, where they're tightly monitored." (Read a TIME cover story...