Of the big European countries, Angela Merkel's Germany has been the firmest advocate of ostracising dictators.

ECONOMIST: Charlemagne

The vote comes after a decade of rule by Carlos Menem, a rumbustious Peronist who turned into one of Latin America's firmest free-market reformers.

ECONOMIST: Argentina��s next steps

One, they have allowed the yuan to appreciate at an accelerated pace to its firmest level in 17 years, as market strategist Dave Rosenberg has pointed out.

FORBES: Year of the Golden Rabbit

Among 50-year-old women a group for whom we have the firmest data the risk of dying from breast cancer in the next 10 years is about four per 1, 000.

WSJ: Should All Women Over 40 Get Annual Mammograms?

In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.

FORBES: Cherish the Right to Vote

"It's an atrocious act of terrorism, against which the Italian government expresses its firmest condemnation, and which has no explanation, if not that of barbarous and blind violence, " a statement from Italy's foreign ministry read.

NPR: Italy Says 7 Foreign Hostages Killed In Nigeria

The country's prime minister, Donald Tusk, has said that Poland will aim to join the euro in 2011, making his firmest statement yet on when the EU's largest former communist economy will adopt the single European currency.

FORBES: Market Scan

"I express my firmest condemnation of this new act of violence that, added with other cruel gestures carried out in that tormented country, does not help pacification or renewal, " the pope said in a message to Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.

CNN: Berlusconi defiant over Iraq

But even the government's firmest critics agree that the magnitude of the project and the involvement of a brand name such as Disney's will boost local confidence - a vital first step if people are to start spending again and the economy is to be reflated.

CNN: Making A Magic Kingdom