in a huff, acrimony, preclude, huffs and puffs

Long famed for tax evasion and money-laundering, Panama risks pariah status

Panama, long a haven for the tax-shy, huffs and puffs over global tax-transparency plans

A tax haven professes to stand on principle

ECON.ST

Yahoo, the Internet portal, has averted a bruising proxy contest with the billionaire investor, Carl Icahn, by agreeing to appoint him and two others to its board, which the company will expand from 9 to 11.

The agreement, which Yahoo announced Monday in a news release, ends an acrimonious battle in which the two sides traded sharp accusations in the wake of the collapse of merger talks between Yahoo and Microsoft.

The agreement makes no changes to Yahoo's management team, leaving the co-founder Jerry Yang as chief executive. Mr. Icahn had vowed to remove Mr. Yang if he succeeded in taking control of Yahoo.

The compromise does not preclude the resumption of talks with Microsoft.

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THE previous attempt by China and Taiwan to end their decades of official acrimony ended in a mutual huff. But now they are talking to each other again as if nothing had happened. At their first formal negotiations in nearly a decade, which began in Beijing on June 12th, the two sides are ignoring political differences and focusing on air services and tourism.

Strait talking again 台海关系：复杂游戏刚开始

acrimonious 
adjective FORMAL
full of anger, arguments and bad feeling:
an acrimonious dispute
Their marriage ended eight years ago in an acrimonious divorce.

acrimoniously
adverb FORMAL
In 1967, he separated acrimoniously from his wife.

acrimony 
noun [U] FORMAL
The acrimony of the dispute has shocked a lot of people.
preclude Show phonetics
verb [T] FORMAL
to prevent something or make it impossible, or prevent someone from doing something:
His contract precludes him from discussing his work with anyone outside the company.
The fact that your application was not successful this time does not preclude the possibility of you applying again next time.

preclusion Show phonetics
noun [U] FORMAL
Your age should not act as a preclusion to you being accepted on the university course.

huff and puff: to breathe loudly, usually after physical 

huff and puff

1. to breathe noisily, usually because you have been doing physical exercise They're so unfit they start huffing andpuffing if they have to run further than twenty yards.

2. (informal) to complain noisily about something but not be able to do anything about it They huffed and puffed aboutthe price, but eventually they paid up.

in a huff
angry and offended:
She's in a real huff because I forgot her birthday.
Julia criticized some aspect of his work and he left/went off in a huff.huff Show phonetics
noun [C] INFORMAL
an angry and offended mood:
Ted's gone into one of his huffs again.

huff verb [I]
"Well if that's how you feel, I'll go, " she huffed (= said in an annoyed or offended way).

huffy Show phonetics
adjective
angry and offended:
I told her she'd made a mistake and she got huffy with me.