The proposal had provoked widespread anger among both ordinary savers and large-scale foreign investors, many of them Russian.

BBC: Cyprus has only hard choices left, says EU's Olli Rehn

In other words, the tax reform the Gang has in mind would lower rates on ordinary income and eliminate or scale back tax preferences for homeownership, health insurance, and other things.

FORBES: What Would the Gang of Six Really Do to Taxes?

Under the government's sliding scale of payments, an ordinary defector can expect only 15m won.

ECONOMIST: North Korea

Ordinary rotors do not work on such a small scale, so Friend's micro-robot project has a special flagellated propeller, mimicking the swimming behaviour of E.coli bacteria.

CNN: Nanobots get to the heart of the matter

"The scale of the proposed job losses means that ordinary bank staff are being asked to suffer the consequences of the mismanagement of the bank's affairs to a disproportionate extent, " said IBOA general secretary Larry Broderick.

BBC: Allied Irish Banks to shed 2,500 jobs

By participating in the program, dubbed Pfizer Pfriends, ordinary Americans will be able to obtain discounts on a scale with those that Pfizer can give to drug discounters, said Pat Kelly, who heads Pfizer's U.S. drug business.

FORBES: Pfizer Makes Hillary Clinton Happy

The plan had the backing of the French government, but it was financed mostly through public subscription, the personal savings of thousands of ordinary French people who regarded de Lesseps as a hero on a Napoleonic scale.

ECONOMIST: The Panama Canal

So far both the scale of capital inflows to emerging economies and the actions taken to counter them are hardly out of the ordinary.

ECONOMIST: Currency wars