21.   It threatens total market collapse, bankruptcies and dire poverty.

22.   The conflict largely dismantled a system of government that favored powerful, wealthy landowners and kept the majority of the population in dire poverty.

23.   The country also faces dire poverty, especially among the Indians who make up about half the population.

24.   The sanctions have reduced to dire poverty a country that was one of the richest in the Arab world before the Gulf crisis.

25.   Their wishes were for an end to the Asian economic crisis, which has caused a recession in Singapore and left millions elsewhere in dire poverty.

26.   They brought war, decay and dire poverty to their country.

27.   Desai, who was born into an upper caste Hindu family, overcame dire poverty to graduate from Bombay University and enter the civil service during the British Raj.

28.   Moreover dire poverty was transmitted from one generation to another, making it very difficult to break the cycle, he said.

29.   The crackdown came after North Korean refugees began to seek political asylum in foreign diplomatic missions in China in an effort to escape dire poverty and famine at home.