The works were introduced by a woman in the characteristic tones of official North Korean public speech, with translation.
This was the tone of the official ceremony too, with a series of speeches emphasising the human cost and the lessons to be learned.
Chinese officials are clearly worried about inflation and bubbles, especially in real estate, but the latest economic statistics will no doubt drive the triumphant tone of recent official pronouncements on the Chinese economy.
Less predictably, given the normally guarded tone of such official reports, it takes aim at the unwillingness of the European Central Bank (ECB) to cut the euro area's short-term interest rates.In so doing, the OECD highlights an important transatlantic curiosity.
Despite the tone of the official news media, it was hard to discern whether the court's ruling was part of a plan by the generals now leading Egypt or a more ad hoc judicial decision, said Michael Hanna, a researcher who studies Egypt at the Century Foundation in New York.
The extraordinary reproof, a departure from the blander tone of most official Syrian statements, was the government's first broadside against Hamas since the organization distanced itself from the embattled President Bashar al-Assad this year, when most Hamas leaders left their refuge in Damascus and shuttered their office there.
All of this recent activity — the unpunished cases of harassment and violence, the ominous tone of the official press, the statements from the government and the Church — comes in the months and weeks leading up to the Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Recently, Senator Biden noticed a change in the tone of Administration officials.
The somber tone of elected officials was not uniformly reflected in the general public.
Yet the tone of some officials' recent comments has been strikingly cautious, reflecting an awareness that Asia has failed to seize the chance during the past decade of strength to address longstanding vulnerabilities.
