Word: portentous
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...escalate their confrontation on the ground, in growing battles over expanded Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and elsewhere and over the status of various sites considered holy by both Jews and Muslims. Last Friday's confrontations between Israeli police and stone-throwing Palestinian youths in Jerusalem may be a portent that the latest round of peace talks could, in fact, be starting under the cloud of a looming intifadeh...
...omission of women from the Afghan delegation may, however, be taken by many as a portent. The Afghan strategy now being pursued by NATO and its regional partners is predicated on the goal of achieving a political solution, and reconciliation with many of those currently fighting under the Taliban banner. The London conference roundly endorsed a reconciliation fund aimed at wooing Taliban fighters to cross sides, while Pakistan and other regional players are pressing for some form of power-sharing deal to be negotiated with the movement's leaders if they cut ties with al-Qaeda. Such talk has Afghan...
...early portent of the change came during the presidential campaign last year, when Joe Biden visited Karzai in Kabul. The two men got into a verbal duel over questions of corruption in the Afghan government; Biden stormed out in the middle of dinner. In a society where decorum is paramount, this was deeply humiliating for Karzai - especially since word quickly got to the press...
...President Obama in Washington on Tuesday, is now 81 years old, and the press is buzzing with speculation about imminent succession - most likely by his son, Gamal. While some see the Nile Delta strike wave as nothing more than a fight for daily bread, others say they're a portent of what's to come. (See TIME's video: "Cairo Readies for Obama...
...exercise next year, most likely by springtime. Few doubt that the generals' henchmen will stuff ballot boxes to try to ensure that the opposition doesn't prevail like it did back in 1990, when the National League for Democracy (NLD) crushed the military's proxy party. (In a troubling portent, official approval of last May's constitutional referendum was tabulated at a credulity-straining 92.4%.) But the query put to me recently in the nation's teahouses got to the heart of a fundamental political dilemma: Is an election, even one that surely will be as flawed as Burma...