By contrast, Mr Gore would expand the State Children's Health Insurance Programme, a set of block grants made to states by the federal government to insure poor children, to reach 1m families living just above the poverty line.

ECONOMIST: Health-care promises

Then we climbed an unlit set of stairs in the same block, and found ourselves in a dusty room full of sepia-tinted photos of Kashmir, from the days of the 1930s novel Lost Horizon, and decades-old Brownie cameras from the Raj.

BBC: The man in the white tunic

Restaurants use an electronic reservation book, and customers have access to its full inventory (though a block of tables can be set aside for unannounced regulars and celebrities).

CNN: Online restaurant reservations really do work

The refusal of some rich countries to accept a second set of commitments under Kyoto (the current ones run out in 2012) was a big stumbling block in Copenhagen.

ECONOMIST: The Canc��n climate-change conference: A sort of progress | The

The discussions with the Treasury have become bogged down over the precise price tag which will be set in terms of a cut in Northern Ireland's block grant.

BBC: What Theresa Villiers will soon discover

They set up two classes of stock--a large block of nonvoting Class A stock (which was willed to the charitable Ford Foundation) and a much smaller block of Class B stock that had voting rights (and was willed to the family).

FORBES: Henry Ford's Will

It can be set for a number of different games - with names such as Block It, Pass and Receive, and On the Spot - designed to hone different aspects of a player's skills.

BBC: Kevin Keegan launches football training systems

One proposal: a set of giant movable gates to be built on the land separating Lake Pontchartrain from the Gulf that when closed could block tidal surges, and when open, improve water flow.

FORBES: Magazine Article