One of the most painful places to get a splinter is under the fingernail.

Unelker Maoga shares a personal account of the painful impact of the drought in Kenya.

So instead we just use it as fodder for morbid jokes.

Other films address a conflict that is closer to home here in France.

This will require painstaking efforts to promote pro Russian groups and gradually weaken and neutralize pro Western circles.

Immediate debt restructuring on a grand scale, biting the bullet and accepting a few painful years of retrenchment.

The surest way to avoid these debilities is to remove the conditions in which they thrive.

As a result, the principal policy toward Iran centers on the imposition of increasingly painful economic sanctions.

Turkey s adoption of a road map for full membership in the EU also created a strong impulse to follow through on painful reforms.

When Israel attempts vainly to defeat Hezbollah, it tries to avoid painful but necessary political compromises over disputed territory.

It took it upon itself not only to meet EU membership criteria, but also push forward with other painful reforms.

By the time of the next regularly scheduled election, it could become clear that there were no real alternatives to Schröder's policies, and it could even be the case that the predicted beneficial effects of painful reforms will become apparent by then.

In an economy in which public debt is growing quickly, the longer fiscal adjustment is put off, the larger and costlier it will have to be.

Households and companies understand this and cease to consume or invest in anticipation of the painful spending cuts and tax hikes to come.

If growth does not recover, the fiscal problems will worsen while making it more politically difficult to enact the painful reforms needed to restore competitiveness.

Has an overly forgiving nature prevented Filipinos from achieving closure in so many painful chapters of their history, or are the ravages of impunity to blame?

These countries now require painful, far reaching reforms to attain economic prosperity, a goal that presupposes cultural change as well.

The prospect of a return to Europe, as Václav Havel once put it, provided the backing for essential, if sometimes painful, economic, social, and political reforms.

At the same time, the political parties that led their countries into the EU all came under pressure, because they were associated with painful reforms.

But Greece s government needs to understand that other eurozone members will not be willing to accommodate its demands if it means delegitimizing their own painful reforms.

It must be supposed that reading was one of his morbid habits, as he fell upon anything that came into his hands with equal avidity.

In recent years, a number of countries, often after painful reforms, have become democratic, showing that it is possible to globalize democracy as well as trade.

Too many voters, it seems, still do not feel better off, and for good reason average incomes have barely begun to rise, following seven painful years.

Without growth, it will be difficult to stabilize public and private debts and deficits as a share of GDP the most important indicator of fiscal sustainability. Moreover, without growth, the social and political backlash against painful belt tightening will eventually undermine austerity and reform.

It will also be a year of destiny for France, whose government is keenly aware that, without painful reforms, the country might be doomed the only question that remains is whether it can implement them.

The interwar economy, shattered by the Great Depression of the early 1930 s, offers a whole series of painful, but important, lessons for the present.

Moreover, without growth, the social and political backlash against painful belt tightening will eventually undermine austerity and reform.

The continent s most successful economy, Germany, insists that its partners follow its brand of fiscal conservatism, choking off the growth that would make painful reforms easier to implement.

Second, and much more important, a tacit anti appeasement ultimatum has been issued to the Kremlin additional expansion in Ukraine will lead to much stronger and more painful sanctions.

In Europe, policymakers have failed to counter an expanding sovereign debt crisis in the eurozone s periphery, despite many summits and programs, multiple expensive bailouts, and the imposition of painful economic sacrifices on societies.

Berkeley Since 2003, I have been saying that the global economy is badly unbalanced and vulnerable to a macroeconomic catastrophe that would yield one of the worst episodes of economic distress of modern times. Since 2004, I have been saying that the situation, once it started, would probably become clear within a year we would know whether the global economy would right itself or begin a downward spiral.

Berkeley Since 2003, I have been saying that the global economy is badly unbalanced and vulnerable to a macroeconomic catastrophe that would yield one of the worst episodes of economic distress of modern times.

Just as Reagan had his Reagan Democrats who were attracted by his message of hope after the malaise of the Jimmy Carter years, Obama will have his Obama Republicans, attracted by the hope of national reconciliation and healing.

It has all the ingredients, though painful memories of World War II and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have so far kept its leaders well away from developing a nuclear stockpile.

Moreover, whatever economic growth some of these countries might eventually register is contingent on enacting politically unpopular reforms that will work only in the long run and at the cost of even more short term pain.

They and others like them are continuing a tradition that unites Venezuela in all its diversity with the rest of the Caribbean, but at the same time doesn't forget the wounds of a painful past that time and memory are still trying to heal.