According to senior diplomats and Nato officials, a hallmark of the Obama approach is to be more realistic, scaling back the ambitions of the Bush administration to turn the country into a functioning democracy and concentrating on security and counter-terrorism.
The weaving of campaign and official business is the hallmark of presidential reelection campaigns, perfected by previous administrations of both parties.
They pointed to conventions that have traditionally offered special protection to national symbols, like flags, emblems, official signs and other hallmarks.
As such, activists say the scheduling of a hearing to file an indictment alleging fraud in a business deal against Mr. Kozlov, so soon after the election and the final protest, bears the hallmarks of official retribution for political activity.
Burlington faced the difficult choice because performance evaluations for teachers and principals based on test results, as much as on local officials' judgment, are a hallmark of the two main competitive grant programs the Obama administration developed to spur its initiatives: the stimulus and Race to the Top.
Secret prisons, torture that leads to the extraction of false confessions, and a nasty intolerance of any who dissent from the government line on official matters, have become a hallmark of the region.
Other big increases would extend relief to hard-hit communities and pay for efforts to restore the worst of the fire-torn areas, and -- in what administration officials have portrayed as a hallmark of the plan -- greatly increase programs aimed at reducing fire risks by thinning overgrown forests of their smallest, most fire-prone trees, while leaving the largest, most fire-resistant trees behind.
Although officials from both countries hailed the arrest as a hallmark of American-Pakistani cooperation, Pakistani officials have since indicated that they orchestrated Mr. Baradar's arrest because he was engaging in peace discussions without the ISI's permission.
The virus bears special encryption hallmarks that an Iranian cyberdefense official said have strong similarities to previous Israeli malware.
A US intelligence official said the latest device bore the "hallmarks" of the 2009 underwear bomb, which was built by the Saudi militant Ibrahim al-Asiri.
