Within weeks, 49% of Gazprom stock will be privatized and available for trading in the west, marking the emergence of a mammoth player in the global energy market.

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Visa Personal Payments, already offered by financial institutions outside the U.S., became available in the U.S. market last year marking the first time that a major payment network has introduced a global requirement for account issuers to accept incoming funds.

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It is not easy to pin down exact dates in a hazy age, but Western historians are probably right in marking off the period 1500 to the present as the age of European global predominance.

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He warned that the country could not escape the global slowdown, saying that the economy was likely to shrink for a few more quarters this year--marking the country's first economic contraction in nearly two decades--but a rebound may occur by year's end.

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