Perhaps, then, it is understandable that gold producers recently became used to coping only with falling prices.

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So it was fitting, perhaps, that Bartoszewski, a Polish Catholic who became Polish foreign minister, was one of the survivors who spoke at the highly-charged ceremony of the camp's liberation inside Auschwitz itself.

BBC: NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Heroes who defied the Holocaust

Perhaps it would be the last chapter in his search for inner peace that became so important to him after becoming a victim of hatred and violence himself when he was shot and gravely injured in a Laurel, Maryland, shopping center parking lot.

CNN: Commentary: My father, George Wallace, and Barack Obama

In the 50 years or so since it became a fixture in living rooms across the country, the television has become perhaps the most American of media devices.

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But, with perhaps one in ten American homeowners saddled with mortgages that were bigger than the value of their property, it soon became clear that housing was the main thing holding back the economy.

NEWYORKER: Replay