Efforts to help them have been hampered by a crippling shortage of transport and medicine.

Compounding the sense of crisis was a crippling shortage of fuel, a shock in an oil-rich country whose economy was based on petroleum production.

Exports are necessary to earn the foreign exchange that could bring an end to the crippling shortages felt throughout the nation's economy.

Q Magazine was not excited about the album: "Tortoise-pace strumming and a crippling shortage of choruses produce only torpor".

For South Africa's economic problems - high unemployment, a low growth rate, and a crippling shortage of skills - will not miraculously vanish when apartheid goes.

Algeria is suffering from a crippling shortage of water, and the sight and sound of frivolously flowing water might not sit right with the neighbors.

In New York City, where entry-level salaries rose to $39,000 this year from $31,910 last, what officials called the most crippling shortage in decades is effectively over.

The play offers glimpses of the way of economic life in Russia, where crippling shortages and inefficiency foster a bizarre method of doing business.

To make up for this crippling shortage he had ordered anti-aircraft guns to be used as field pieces.

But authority officials say they have met legal requirements and must move quickly, or the city could face a crippling shortage of electricity next summer.