Messi had been relatively subdued after his early brilliance, but he broke the shackles to burst clear and force another excellent save from Almunia as the Spanish giants refused to take a backward step.

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And they will take us backward.

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An entrepreneur who has nurtured his startup like a beloved child may be reluctant to take a step backward and make the changes that need to be made.

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Why is Mexico poised to take this apparently backward step?

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"If I have to take the odd backward step on the way to landing the title in August, then that is what I will have to deal with, " he said.

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Democrats seem inclined to take a step in the right direction on the former while slipping backward on the latter.

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To overcome the problem of backward-compatibility, modern x86 chips such as the Pentium are able to take x86-style instructions from old software and split them up into several smaller micro-operations which lend themselves better to performance-enhancing trickery.

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It flew to backward point where Sammy, the first St Lucian to play for the West Indies, dived forward to try and take the catch.

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