Both units have been hurt by soft end demand in the markets they serve.

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But even some business groups are coming down on the side that wants to end soft money contributions.

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The device looks like a long sheath with two soft rings at each end.

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An elegant mid-tempo ballad, the song conjures images of a lamp-post-lined avenue, with Gene Kelly performing a soft-shoe at one end and Bogart and Bacall making out at the other.

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And the shift has occurred from public power to private power, from political power to economic power, from hard power to soft power, with the end of the Cold War as the turning point.

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Ever since Soft Spot, and starting with the title track to 2005's End of Love, he's taken to occasionally needling those for whom expressions of love run counter to a painstakingly maintained ironic distance.

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The one ploy remaining was the short ball, and Stuart Broad was entrusted with that, but the soft ball, slow pitch and dominance of the batsmen soon put an end to that, hook shots played down with rolled wrists and great control.

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Volumes were buoyed by the sales of Nokia's low-end dual-SIM models in emerging markets like Southeast Asia, but were a little soft overall, as initial shipments of Microsoft Lumia phones could not offset declining Symbian sales.

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Unlike previous EliteBooks, though, it sports soft, rubbery surfaces instead of the brushed metal we've come to expect from HP's high-end business machines.

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