Word: face
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that he will grudgingly sign it. He is bound by the Czech constitution to approve the document after the parliament endorsed it and he indicated in an interview last weekend that it was probably too late to derail the process. However, the deeply Euroskeptic President has devised a shrewd face-saving plan which allows him to still emerge a winner - at least in the public eye. He has demanded that an exemption be added to the treaty to protect Czechs from potential property claims by the families of ethnic Germans who were expelled from the former Czechoslovakia after World...
...fails to wrangle any concessions from the E.U., Klaus has succeeded on one front: shoring up his support among the Czech people. "Vaclav Klaus is a great pragmatist," says Jan Kubacek, a political science lecturer at Charles University in Prague. "He neither enters lost battles nor wants to lose face...
...Afghanistan war drags into its ninth year and the Iraq war its seventh year, the European Union faces a unique challenge in trying to stop refugees from these countries. Unlike the huge numbers of Africans trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe, Iraqi and Afghan migrants face only an overland journey - though one that can take months. Once they reach the E.U., usually by crossing from Turkey into Greece, migrants can easily slip over internal E.U. borders, crossing numerous countries without detection. Many of them attempt to make it Britain, where they speak the language and have relatives. Those...
...European officials also face a deeper question over what constitutes a refugee these days. The international refugee rules were drafted during the Cold War in order to offer asylum to those who risked individual persecution for their political or religious beliefs. That now seems dated, with migrants fleeing everything from wars to famine and ecological disasters like droughts. Still, many immigration officials have stuck to the original definition. "They say, 'You weren't really fleeing persecution, just fleeing bullets,' " says Bill Frelick, director of the Human Rights Watch refugee-policy program in Washington. "But those distinctions are rapidly fading...
...change can imperil bedrock civil liberties, the report confirms how fleeting press freedom can be, even in countries known for championing a robust press. But it also emphasizes that policy changes can nurse fallen countries back to strength. The ranking also highlights the fierce challenges that journalists continue to face, especially in nations where strife or dictatorships take a toll on their ability to function freely...