Word: plight
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Rural banks have long been respected and profitable cornerstones of small farming towns. Now, however, many of the lenders have become both unwilling villains and victims in the grim drama unfolding in the American farm belt. Caught between their sympathy for the farmers' plight and their own fight for survival, banks have had to foreclose on loan after loan. But in many cases the foreclosures have not prevented banks from failing. Says James McDermott, senior vice president of Keefe Bruyette & Woods, a Wall Street investment firm that specializes in bank stocks: "The farm-belt mom-and-pop banks...
...have been crying wolf for so long that their city cousins have mostly stopped listening. But along rural back roads last week, the expressions of anguish seemed genuine. Farmers sometimes differed about the causes of their distress, but they shared a frustration, almost a sense of shame, about their plight...
...could hear that message echo in the Congress last week from another Illinois man--Ronald Reagan. His State of the Union message was a hymn to freedom. Reagan has taken notice of the farm plight and so has Washington, and there will be a mighty bureaucratic effort to hold on to this portion of our national heritage. But deep, painful change is coming no matter what Ronald Reagan does...
Cambridge's three subway stops have always made the city a haven for many of the Boston, areas homeless, but according to some working to combat the problem, the past two weeks' below-zero temperatures and bitter wind have exacerbated their plight...
...Ethiopians, the refugees are finding themselves in a nation that is almost as bereft of aid as the one they left. There are now about 1 million refugees in the country, and their numbers could swell by 600,000 by the end of March, relief officials predict. The worsening plight of the region, says a spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees, is rapidly becoming "a disaster of major proportions...