But should we be assuming that this is a portent of climate change?
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There is a portent here I am afraid and an unsettling one.
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The sweeping trend in female entrepreneurship, particularly among young women is a portent of real change in the startup economy, particularly in fundraising.
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Could it be a portent of things to come?
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But was that room full of trainees on a video the entire cadre or just one of many small cells, a portent of a young Saudi population about to rise up en masse?
"Unfortunately, I am bearish and I have been wrong, " said Samer Nsouli, chief investment officer at Lyford Group International, a hedge fund, who argues that recent weakness in copper and oil is a portent of a global slowdown.
The body's closure was a "portent to the politicisation of the public information", he said, because individual departments would now be responsible for all communications.
But January's rise in the claimant count is a worrying portent.
Even though voters have not warmed to Mr Romney personally, they still view him as a more competent economic manager than the president a worrying portent for Mr Obama.
The current prime minister, Najib Razak, deputy prime minister in 2007 before taking over the top job in an internal party coup, must have feared that the second Bersih rally might be a similar portent.
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But even if the tax deal does not prove as much of a defeat for Mr Obama as it currently appears, it is certainly a worrying portent for America's alarming public finances (see article).
At the heart of the anxiety expressed by German politicians is a fear that British renegotiation could eat up a lot of time at EU meetings at a moment when voters would prefer a focus on economic recovery and that even if ultimately successful, such talks could set a grim portent for Europe more widely.
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