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• But after several years when a wave of student aid from Washington held net prices mostly in check, real costs for students have now jumped two straight years, as that wave washes back from its high-water mark.
• At private colleges, enrolling about one-quarter of four-year college students, list prices remained substantially higher: $39,518 on average, including room and board. During the previous three years, net prices at private colleges had declined. But this year net tuition and fees increased about $780. Including room and board, but factoring in aid, the typical student at a private college is paying $23,840.
• ___

• KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- When Ukraine's president opened up his home to TV cameras, he presented a cozy place with a small office just big enough for his grandchildren to play in. But his critics point to strong evidence he actually lives in very different digs: a luxurious, marble-columned mansion with a golf course, a helipad and even an ostrich enclosure.
• The reported grandeur is becoming a campaign issue in a country quickly getting fed up with widespread corruption. Critics call Viktor Yanukovych's home an emblem of the secrecy and arrogance that defines his presidency, painting him as a leader who basks in splendor while his main political opponent, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, is locked up in prison on charges the West has called politically motivated.
• Yanukovych has refused to answer questions about the house or the vast park where it sits, once darkly suggesting that an investigative journalist back off. An opposition activist looking for answers broke into the property James Bond-style, scaling the walls with a tow rope. She was detained, but still managed to salvage photographs of a golf course and glitzy buildings, describing an opulent palace guarded by heavy security.
• Political commentator Vitaly Portnikov, who has compared Yanukovych's government to a "mafia" jeopardizing Ukraine's desire for greater integration with the European Union, cited Yanukovych's clandestine residence as an example of the corruption and lack of transparency unacceptable in the West.
• "Viktor Yanukovych's main goal is not to be the president of Ukraine but to be the No. 1 oligarch in Ukraine," said Portnikov. "He fought for power ... specifically in order to consolidate in his hands a huge amount of resources and property, in order to

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