It began 11 years ago, when the energy crisis and the fiscal crisis gripped the city simultaneously.

A fiscal crisis, like the one that racked New York City in the 1970's, has gripped the state's smaller cities, making this city's convulsions far from extraordinary.

During her stay in Jamaica, a political crisis gripped the island, and no one was allowed to leave with any money.

After the Supreme Court ordered that Mr. Sharif be restored, a political crisis gripped the country.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, financial crisis gripped the New York City government and many of the city's institutions, including NYU.

A major crisis gripped the ACLU in 1968 when a debate erupted over whether to defend Benjamin Spock and the Boston Five against federal charges that they encouraged draftees to avoid the draft.

However, a financial crisis was gripping the country at the time, and locally a bad drought was occurring.

While crisis and uncertainty have gripped Burundi for two years, the violence of the last week has sowed panic at all levels of society, among Hutu, Tutsi and Westerners.

He isolated himself from the electorate in 1979 when he said "a moral and spiritual crisis" was gripping the nation.

The crisis has gripped Italy the way steroids in baseball have the United States and stunned many with its speedy onset, coming just three months after the giddy celebration of a three-year renovation of the 18th-century house.