Word: ruinously
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...have to be destitute not to be able to afford a fire. You have to be just as poor not to afford salt and sugar. And you have to have ruinous public sanitation not to be able to filter out the feces of an infected person from the water supply (ingesting fecal matter is the most common way for cholera to spread). So it is a stark indication of how far Zimbabwe has fallen that a country that used to export food is now in the grip of a cholera epidemic that the World Health Organization (WHO) says has claimed...
...With his authority draining, Musharraf was forced to make a series of ruinous concessions. Washington urged him to broaden his political base and enter a power-sharing agreement with the late Benazir Bhutto. Musharraf allowed Bhutto to come back to Pakistan, and Sharif returned weeks later. In the face of domestic and international pressure, Musharraf had to shed his uniform - the source of much of his authority. Matters grew worse when Bhutto was assassinated in Rawalpindi in late December. And a relatively free and fair general election in February stripped Musharraf of a loyal government as his allies suffered...
...this really is the beginning of the end for Mugabe, it will have significance throughout Africa, where the years since Ghana first won its freedom in 1957 have been a serial, tragic disappointment, marked by war, genocide, poverty and famine. At the root of them all was ruinous leadership. With few exceptions, Africa's postindependence leaders wrested their continent back from colonial rule only to plunder it afresh. Contemptuous of their own people and often destined for a bloody end, many contrived to make their nations poorer than they were in colonial times...
...just a fraction of Moscow's 8,500 or so warheads could be devastating. Says Kosta Tsipis, co-director of a program in science and technology at M.I.T.: "The critical failure of all these defensive systems is that they must be perfect. Less than that and they are ruinous. What the President is offering is a cruel hoax...
Lebanon may be on the brink of another ruinous civil war, but for the country's basketball fans, there are more important things to worry about. Forget the office pools and the social networking for big-game tickets so common in the U.S., particularly during "March Madness"; such is the passion of the Lebanese fans that at their games, riot police and the occasional armored personnel carrier are as common a sight as cheerleaders...