Word: wean
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Nkrumah, Ghana's founder, embarked on an ambitious program, building schools, houses, roads, a new port, factories. The idea was to wean Ghana from trade and investment with Britain and the other colonial powers. But Nkrumah's policies came at a high price. Industrialization cost millions, and the government neglected cocoa, Ghana's traditional export crop, which brought in most of the foreign exchange. Ghana's economy began to fall apart. In 1964, in a move that would be repeated by other African leaders in the decades to come, Nkrumah declared Ghana a one-party state and himself leader...
...contain Tehran--with Saudi Arabia, Iran's longtime rival in the Persian Gulf, as the linchpin. The Saudis have been working hard to make sure Iran's ally Hizballah doesn't overthrow Fouad Siniora's government in Beirut. They've been trying to reconcile the Palestinians, partly to wean the militant Hamas from its funders in Tehran. Some even speculate that Riyadh is making overtures to Syria, trying to lure it too from the Iranian fold...
...fight leftist rebels and drug trafficking. Under the first Plan Colombia, Bogota received more than $4.5 billion in the past six years from the United States in mostly military aid. An additional $1 billion came from donations from European nations which supported social programs and alternative development schemes to wean farmers off growing drug crops like coca. But support for that aid in the Democrat-dominated U.S. Congress is far from a done deal. Several U.S. lawmakers had already expressed reservations about the Bush administration's 2008 budget request for Colombia, which they had hoped would shift its focus...
...will the new measures wean the French off their beloved "clopes"? Polls show nearly 80% of respondents reporting satisfaction with the move to clear the air, and many observers have been pleasantly surprised at the general willingness of smokers to get with the healthier times. But not everyone is happy with the new restrictions. While some grumbled about "American-style" kill-joy obsessions with health at the expense of life's small pleasures, others complain that the ban won't extend to cafes, bars, restaurants, discos and hotels until next January...
...besides Iran in the region) joined, the new alliance could show that it was willing to protect both moderate Shi'ites as well as Sunnis. The alliance would then be able to help take over from the U.S. some of the security responsibility in Iraq, and it could wean the Shi'ite leaders in Baghdad from their ties to Tehran...