"Perhaps it was the bitterest night I have had at Barcelona, " he told Spanish Canal Plus television.

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But their bitterest discord is over legislation drafted by Mr Lieberman's party to ease conversion to Judaism.

ECONOMIST: Israel's foreign minister

It wasn't his government, but his bitterest rival's, (David) Ben-Gurion and the others.

BBC: Jerusalem Diary: 20 April

Still, Mrs Hasina is not quite the all-powerful bogeywoman her bitterest opponents suggest.

ECONOMIST: The prime minister sets the country on a dangerous path

One of Davis' bitterest fights, now under way before the highest court in California, may also be one of his last.

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But, for all that, Thatcher was probably the politician who took on the collectivist impulse with most conviction, against the bitterest opposition.

BBC: Margaret Thatcher: Economic legacy of an Iron Lady

The Brazilian's second goal prompted the home fans to applaud his display - a rare show of admiration towards a player representing their bitterest rivals.

BBC: SPORT | Football | Europe | Real Madrid 0-3 Barcelona

That much is clear even to its bitterest opponent, Dale Bumpers, the retiring Democratic senator from Arkansas who has attempted to get the station killed off every year since 1992.

ECONOMIST: The space station

"There was this whole idea that Prozac made you better - well, I wasn't sure, " says Joanna Moncrieff, now a senior clinical lecturer in neuroscience at University College London and author of forthcoming book The Bitterest Pills.

BBC: How Prozac entered the lexicon

No less predictably, the left-wing press, notably La Repubblica, a Rome daily which backs the ruling centre-left coalition and is owned partly by one of Mr Berlusconi's bitterest business and political rivals, Carlo De Benedetti, was full of praise.

ECONOMIST: Unfit to write about Italy?