A bill to reserve a third of the seats for women has long stalled -- held up, its advocates say, by the men who hold the votes to pass it but also want to hold onto their seats.
UNITED NATIONS — At the United Nations, the desire to impose ever harsher sanctions on North Korea to try to curb its development of nuclear arms and ballistic missiles has long stalled in the face of Chinese opposition — the standard chain of events playing out here again on Tuesday after North Korea said it had carried out its third nuclear test.
While the Geneva process has long stalled and struggled to implement its agreed-to principles, the Iran-Russia-Turkey-led diplomatic initiative, as exemplified by Astana, has proven able to bring together the real stakeholders in the conflict, both inside and outside the country.
More recently, as the state insurance superintendent, he resolved the bitter insurance dispute that had long stalled construction at the World Trade Center site.
Stinginess from America's lawmakers, particularly some Republicans, had long stalled the debt-relief effort, because other countries were unwilling to put more money into the pot until America paid its share.
The headline moment of the trip was Mr. Obama's announcement on the United Nations seat, even though the endorsement is seemingly as much symbolic as substantive, given the serious political obstacles that have long stalled efforts to reform membership of the Security Council.
WASHINGTON — President Obama and a bipartisan group of senators will begin separate but simultaneous efforts next week to build support for an overhaul of immigration laws, an effort that had long stalled in Washington but was pushed to the forefront again during the 2012 presidential campaign.
The consolidation process among the weakened cajas had long stalled because of such personal and party rivalries, but it gathered pace over the past month under pressure from the authorities in Madrid and following the Bank of Spain's rescue last month of CajaSur, an Andalusian lender.
But on Monday, the city announced what might be, for many drivers, the most welcome wonder in the Brooklyn Bridge's 130 years: an unclogging of the famed (and maligned) traffic bottlenecks on the crossing's access ramps, where a series of choke points had long stalled vehicles on both sides of the bridge.
Climate talks have long stalled as developed countries balk at levying expensive environmental regulations on their industry, which they fear would cause "carbon leakage," the movement of manufacturing and jobs to countries lacking environmental restrictions.
Negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis have long stalled, and the newly elected right-wing government in Israel has shown little interest in working with Abbas over a final peace agreement.
