Ten years previously, a 650 pound pig pinned a Welsh farmer to his tractor until his wife scared the animal away.

On Sunday, rescuers freed a woman who had been pinned under rubble for two days with the body of her mother next to her.

The UK has pinned its hopes for the gold medal on two people short track speed skater Elise Christie, a triple gold medalist at last year s world championships, and Lizzy Yarnold, the previous skeleton Olympic champion.

When Argentina's financial crisis first exploded, I pinned the primary responsibility on Argentina itself, rather than on international institutions such as the IMF. Now, half a year later, the balance of responsibility needs to be reconsidered.

So we enter the post crisis era without any settled view on the right macro policy for either recovery or prevention of future meltdowns. Great hopes are pinned on better financial regulation to stop excessive credit creation.

Eight years later, pinned down by a US Predator drone and French airstrikes, Qaddafi met his demise. Without a nuclear deterrent, his regime was helpless when the US reneged on the deal a lesson that has not been lost on North Korea.

Ben Bernanke, the US Federal Reserve chairman, once famously pinned the whole US current account deficit on a global savings glut. But it would be more accurate to say that there is global investment shortfall, with investment trending downwards despite the upward trend in global growth.

Yet there are reasons to fear that there will be such a decline slower growth means fewer competitive pressures for heightened efficiency diminished risk tolerance means a lower appetite for innovation and experimentation and nominal interest rates pinned at the zero lower bound means that society s savings cannot be used effectively.

So we all know the three o'clock in the morning syndrome, when something you've been worrying about wakes you up I see a lot of people and for an hour you toss and turn, it gets worse and worse, and by four o'clock you're pinned to the pillow by a monster this big.

Of course, restoring peace and security is taking much more time than expected. With almost daily terrorist attacks, ordinary citizens victimized by shell and gunfire or misconceived bombing, the abuses of Iraqi prisoners, and the hostility of Iraq's Shiites on whom the US had pinned high hopes for the peace process American policy is in jeopardy of failure.

Sharon had his troops climb over the sand dunes to enter the trench lines at their top end and attack down their length a simple maneuver that the Egyptians could have defeated had they not been pinned down by an artillery barrage and Israeli tanks firing directly at them. The Israeli infantrymen had taped flashlights to their helmets so that the tank gunners could direct their fire at the Egyptians just ahead of them.

Although it appears that the operational link between the Taliban and Al Qaida has been weakened by the action of the Pakistani armed forces in the border area, which has pinned down foreign fighters, killed or captured many and driven others away and although Al Qaida, at least for the present, may lack the resources to mount any significant offensive in support of its Taliban allies, there is no doubt that Al Qaida leaders still see Afghanistan as an important front.