Word: blocs
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...Last night, under new rules designed to stop this type of bloc voting, 50% of the points were awarded by the traditional public phone-in and 50% by a panel of music producers in each country. Advocates of the new jury system will be quick to say it helped Norway transcend borders - with a mix of fans and more objective industry experts voting, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania and Russia all awarded Norway the maximum 12 points, thereby snubbing one another. But since Eurovision has no plans to reveal which national juries voted for which countries, its actual effect is difficult...
...leaders, including President President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey is a predominantly Sunni country, many observers noted, and maybe the militant Shi'ite warlord was making a show of nascent sectarian reconciliation. "The attitude is good," says al-Jubouri, a member of the Sunni political bloc known in Arabic as Tawafiq. "But so far it's all talk, we need to see actions...
...that turns out to be the case, Sadr could still return to Iraq and reassert himself at some point with two powerful political cards he currently retains: a sizeable bloc of loyalists in the parliament and, most importantly, the still powerful Mahdi Army militia. Sadr issued a cease-fire edict to the Mahdi Army late last year as the militia struggled to fend off a crackdown by strengthened Iraqi security forces. But dormant fighters with the group say they are ready to take to the streets again if Sadr sends out the call, a prospect that has many in Baghdad...
...silence new - and possibly more accurate - interpretations of the country's history and solidify the government's control of the past. But the real aim of the law may be to provide the Kremlin with another rhetorical tool with which to attack governments of former Soviet Republics and Eastern Bloc countries that have increasingly moved towards the West. The most recent example - which is still making waves in Russia - was the 2007 row in Estonia over the moving of the statue of a Red Army soldier from a central Tallinn square to a nearby war cemetery, a decision which triggered...
...marks five years since the European Union opened up to bring former eastern bloc countries into its fold, taking it to 27 members. But instead of fanfare and fireworks, the mood is muted in New Europe and among the E.U.'s veterans...