21.   While these numbers have not hit crisis proportions, scholars fear that a weakened economy could trigger a widespread loss of health insurance.

22.   Few expect the current disagreement to reach such crisis proportions.

23.   In China, where AIDS has reached crisis proportions, officials handed out condoms and newspapers carried sympathetic articles about AIDS victims in a campaign to tackle public ignorance.

24.   Missing this time around, however, is a sense among the voting public that corruption has reached crisis proportions.

25.   The shortage has reportedly reached crisis proportions in the textile industry.

26.   The shortage has reached crisis proportions in the New York metropolitan region, said Dr. Robert Jones, president and CEO of the New York Blood Center.

27.   The talks have helped stabilize the immigration situation, which reached crisis proportions last summer when Cubans fled in droves aboard makeshift vessels.

28.   Those talks focused on the unemployment that has reached crisis proportions in many industrial nations over the past decade.

29.   Beijing authorities have stated their firm intention of curbing traffic in the capital, which has reached crisis proportions and led to a steep rise in serious accidents.

30.   The humanitarian drama swelled to crisis proportions as the refugees -- many of them weak and suffering from dehydration -- took to the roads.