An assortment of objects - mostly beer cans and small rocks - rained down on the Swazi bench after Zimbabwe's fifth goal.

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The provision for financial assistance to Turkey included in the war-funding request Mr Bush sent to Congress on March 24th was small beer by comparison with what Turkey would have got if it had co-operated fully.

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His strategy has always been to co-operate on the minor stuff, but deny charges that carry harsher sentences. (Each human-rights charge against him could jail him for 25 years.) The first case he faced on February 18th, for influence-peddling in favour of two relatives of his former lover, Jacqueline Beltran, is small beer compared with corrupting judges, running guns and ordering death-squad killings.

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And it is this innovation that helped pave the way for the US craft beer scene and inspired the burgeoning small-batch brewery movement taking place in countries like Sweden and Italy.

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Property disputes, stolen girlfriends, stolen boyfriends, stolen sheep, spilled beer -- all issues big and small fall within the bounds of Takanakuy's physical jurisprudence.

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That leaves a maximum six or seven inches of sea level rise remaining from human-induced warming (probably less), which is pretty small beer.

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Ethanol, the chemical name for the alcohol in liquor, beer and wine, may play only a small part in producing many symptoms associated with hangovers -- thirst, headache, nausea, fatigue, sweating and tremors.

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This may be small beer by American standards, but is scarcely what is expected of a declining industrial city in north-east Scotland.

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