Five feet away four people crowded around a figure on the ground.

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Both sides, he says, are battling for ground to figure out how to negotiate a settlement.

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The only other notable figure to have gained ground is Emma Bonino, an unconventional and outgoing (in every sense) European commissioner.

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"It is up to negotiators to figure out where the middle ground is today, " Bowles said.

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So I think this was an opportunity to listen to each other and to figure out where that common ground is.

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They hired an ex-CIA agent to go in and sort of figure out the facts on the ground, and that there's talking about spiriting the boys away to the U.S. and eventually to United Arab Emirates.

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We've all heard stories about six-or-seven-figure technology purchases that never got off the ground or were only implemented narrowly due to product shortcomings or too little human bandwidth.

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Regulators in the U.S. and Japan, along with engineers at Boeing, have been trying to figure out what caused fires on several Dreamliners, forcing the FAA and other agencies to ground all the operating aircraft indefinitely.

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This figure includes not just the work on the rocket, but its Orion astronaut capsule and the ground work needed at Kennedy to get the spaceport ready for a new type of launch vehicle.

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Prime Minister GORDON BROWN (United Kingdom): Subject, of course, to conditions on the ground, we plan from next spring to reduce force numbers in Southern Iraq to a figure of two and a half thousand.

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