Word: solemn
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...solemn speech to the nation, Berlusconi promised to work for "all the Italians, even those who voted against me." Waving the one-page "contract with Italians" that he had histrionically signed before TV cameras days before the polling, he repeated his vow to withdraw from politics if he failed to accomplish at least four of its five promises - tax cuts, higher pensions, 1.5 million new jobs, major public works and a reduction in serious crimes. Despite Berlusconi's toothy assurances, big questions remained about his conflicts of interest, the composition of his future government and the policies he would pursue...
...stopped the clock. The problem was not that there were doubts about McVeigh's guilt; he has admitted that. This was not the discovery of some sinister plot, Justice officials insisted--just human error, maybe a computer glitch. But it was another bomb exploding nonetheless. Ashcroft looked drained and solemn as he announced that McVeigh's execution would be postponed for a month so his defense lawyers could review the documents. "I believe the Attorney General has a more important duty than the prosecution of any single case, as painful as that may be to our nation," Ashcroft said...
...found on the Quad’s grassy lawn, where the scampering of squirrels is chased a second later by the barking of a dog and, just slightly later, the gleeful squeal of a small child. Spring sounds invigorate the spirit, a heartening departure from winter’s solemn silence...
...when my Grandma Keillor lay dying in a little hospital in Onamia, tended by her daughters, and my father and his brothers came to bid farewell to her. They drew up their chairs to the foot of the bed where she lay unconscious, and they were very still and solemn for a while, but in due course they got to talking about cars. It struck me at the time as callous--I was 20 and a poet--to sit by your dying mother and discuss a particular low-mileage Ford station wagon you'd seen on a used...
Even at its most decorous and solemn, the law has its limits, and they were on stark display last week. Within the walls of the courtroom at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, legal reasoning held sway as presiding judge Lord Ranald Sutherland issued the unanimous verdicts of a three-judge panel in the trial of two Libyans for mass murder. The decisions were the culmination of more than 12 years of anguished activism by family members, and almost a decade of diplomatic wrangling to secure the defendants and set the unique location and parameters of the trial. They were based...