The king's huge package of extra aid, which included household-debt relief, bigger housing loans and a 15% raise for state workers, was a standard response to public pressure.

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However, if some of these athletes break through and become part of the elite group that heads for London, suddenly their new personal best becomes their new standard, and the pressure is on them to continue to perform at that new level.

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The Fund is under withering pressure to ease standard lending criteria for Russia on a preferential basis.

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Tough measures brought in to rescue the Greek economy have seen a massive drop in the standard of living, and it's brought pressure on the interim government.

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But even without this pressure, Chinese officials had reason to question their choice of standard to which to peg their currency.

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With 1, 024 pen pressure levels, the Modbook Pro offers four times the sensitivity of the industry standard of 256 levels employed by the other tablet computers on the market.

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Paul has not offered any suggestions on how to relieve the pressure felt by homeowners underwater on their mortgages, who he would see as standard victims of a free market.

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Dr Brian Keighley, the chairman of the British Medical Association Scotland, said the high standard of performance was testimony to the NHS's hard-working staff, under pressure to achieve targets as staffing numbers and budgets fall.

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For his part, Renner told CNN that while he didn't necessarily feel pressure to live up to Damon, he did hold himself to a personal standard of excellence when it came to performing the action work.

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Isabella Sankey of Liberty, a pressure group, fears the CPI could be worse than the ASBO, as the standard of proof will be lower and the test of anti-social behaviour broader.

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Audit firms finally began to reduce the pressure on clients that reached a peak in 2006 because of their own litigation anxiety when Auditing Standard 5 was enacted in 2007.

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