Word: blocs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...world has already been enormous, ranging from the global to the personal. He has covered more than half a million miles in his travels. Many believe his support of the trade union Solidarity in his native Poland was a precipitating event in the collapse of the Soviet bloc. After he was nearly killed in 1981, he visited and pardoned his would-be assassin in jail. Asked an awed Mehmet Ali Agca: "Tell me why it is that I could not kill you?" Even those who contest the words of John Paul do not argue with his integrity -- or his capacity...
...first time in the history of humanity, abortion was being proposed as a means of population control. He put all the prestige of his office at the service of this issue." For nine days the Vatican delegates, under his direction, lobbied and filibustered; they kept their Latin American bloc in line and struck up alliances with Islamic nations opposed to abortion. In the end, the Pope won. The Cairo conference inserted an explicit statement that "in no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning"; in return the Vatican gave partial consent to the document...
Norwegians declined an invitation to join the European Union, with 52.2% of voters opposing E.U. membership and 47.8% supporting it. With its rich fisheries and large North Sea oil and gas deposits, Norway saw no advantage in joining the 12-member trading bloc, due to expand to 15 on Jan. 1 with the admission of Austria, Finland and Sweden. It was not the first time the country had spurned a proposal from Europe: in 1972 Norwegians passed up the opportunity to join what was then the European Economic Community...
European Union leaders, meanwhile, convened their own summit in Essen, Germany, to announce plans to open their trading bloc gradually to the former Soviet satellites of Eastern Europe. The move mirrors events on the other side of the Atlantic: If the all-American trade accord goes through, the U.S. is expected to depend far more on South America than on Europe or Japan in the next century...
...government liberal and not the "New Democrat" he campaigned as in 1992. The evidence? Clinton's own pollster, Stan Greenberg, ran a national poll and focus-group interviews for the DLC right after the midterm elections. The results: More than half of the growing bloc of independent voters --- who now make up 30 percent of the electorate -- clearly repudiated the Democrats and Clinton's term so far -- even as they fell short of handing Republicans a mandate. Ironically, the last straw for many was Clinton's signature health care package, which they viewed as a big-government fiasco...