"He's been so dominant for so long on clay, but everyone knew that just couldn't last, " said Djokovic, who was also beaten by the Spaniard in last year's Rome final -- Nadal's last tournament win.

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Described by John Curtis, keeper of special Middle East projects at London's British Museum, as "one of the most iconic objects in the museum, " it is a small, unremarkable oblong of clay almost 9 inches long and 4 inches in circumference.

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Federer, by contrast, has taken a long time to adapt to clay.

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That ll go a long way toward getting Chairman William Clay Ford Jr.

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Each piece then gets hand trimmed or pinched into shape, he says, showing how a thin tube of clay will be shaped into candelabra that looks like a long, thin piece of coral.

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As my friend Clay Shirky says, in a revolution, the old order gets destroyed long before the new order emerges.

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Beirut's hackerspace has conducted experiments with clay and cryptography, and while Baghdad's experimental makers are a long way from solving the city's notorious traffic issues, Zuhair is proposing a simple intervention to make it more tolerable: Starting a podcast to entertain gridlocked commuters.

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"I came off a long break, so I was nervous out there, " said the clay specialist.

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