The pre-Easter declaration is designed to make this movement a little easier by careful wording.

ECONOMIST: Northern Ireland: Beyond use | The

Last night the President signed a pre-landfall emergency declaration for the state of North Carolina, ensuring the state has what it needs beforehand.

WHITEHOUSE: Press Briefing

The state has requested a "pre-landfall" declaration from President Bush, asking the federal government to release personnel, ambulances and other assistance to prepare for the storm.

CNN: Louisiana governor declares emergency ahead of Gustav

All they got out of the exhausting pre-Easter talks in Belfast was a joint declaration from Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, the Irish prime minister, containing phrases that might make it easier for unionists and republicans to compromise without losing face.

ECONOMIST: Northern Ireland

In their declaration, prompted by the pope's pre-millennium call to local churches to ask for pardon for misdeeds committed during the course of the church's history, the French bishops seek to place the church's actions between 1940 and 1945 in a historical context.

ECONOMIST: France