1.   Pleading poverty, he sought charity from local shopkeepers, and a butcher gave him an enormous turkey, which might actually have been a small emu.

2.   Fish and chip men again plead poverty today.

3.   Analysts also said the timing of the dividend increase was curious because automakers are negotiating contracts with the United Automobile Workers union and usually plead poverty during such talks.

4.   Chinese Premier Li Peng announced a national economic blueprint that makes it pay for cash-hungry state companies to plead poverty.

5.   Grandstanding at home by promising a big income tax cut while pleading poverty in D.C. does not cut it.

6.   In some instances, parents are unwilling to pay or they plead poverty.

7.   It quickly won the approval of a skeptical City Council, besieged as it was by demands for more expenditures and by department heads pleading poverty.

8.   National governments in West Africa pleaded poverty.

9.   North of here, Glacier Park has also shut down several campgrounds, pleading poverty, as in the case of Yellowstone.

10.   Now, both universities are pleading poverty, hitting students with huge fee increases and estimating huge deficits in coming years.