I dropped my keys.

Layla was trapped.

Layla felt completely trapped.

Similarly, Israel s government has backed itself into a domestic policy trap of its own.

But it is not just world markets that have enmeshed China in a new commons.

Indeed, advanced countries, including the US, have dug themselves into a deep hole.

African nations are now showing a strong determination to end the conflicts that have bedevilled the continent for decades.

One strategy, termed benign neglect, was to let the surplus countries pile up reserves until they realized that they had a very big problem.

As for terrorism, this year that ugly scourge struck again on many occasions and has caused thousands of casualties among innocent civilians.

By contrast, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson s approach is another example of the kind of shell games that got America into its mess.

The astounding difficulty of everyday survival following the USSR s collapse trapped most Russians into focusing on their families most urgent needs. Civic apathy set in.

PARIS The global economic crisis has claimed many victims unemployed workers, underwater homeowners, and bankrupt pensioners but nowhere have the repercussions been as devastating as in the developing world.

By persistently adhering to a planned economy and obsolete ideology, North Korea is trapped in a vicious cycle, suffering from unstable food supplies and low, or sometimes negative, economic growth.

Incidentally, I think it would be far more revealing to draw up a list of those states that have destroyed or damaged the relationship of trust with their citizens to such an extent that they can only secure their tax revenues by criminalizing tax evasion and trampling on privacy.

The reaction of EU member states to this ongoing self inflicted impasse is unambiguous rather than trying to reenergize the process of further political and economic integration, they are primarily acting on their own to try to fill the vacuum that has emerged.