Word: abrupt
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...approves of hanging drug dealers and locking up gangsters without trial. He has struck a simple social contract, accepting limits on personal freedom in return for prosperity and stability. What holds the deal together is the country's lack of corruption. When officials say some policy, no matter how abrupt or painful, is for the public good, people usually believe them...
NINE DAYS OF SUSPENSE OVER THE MAKEUP OF RUSsia's new government finally broke: President Boris Yeltsin's key reformist ministers will keep their jobs after all. Yeltsin's abrupt abandonment of his acting Prime Minister, free- market maven Yegor Gaidar, made the announcement a relief for those who feared that the Russian President was forsaking the country's radical reform path altogether. Among the key players from the Gaidar team retaining their posts are Deputy Prime Ministers Alexander Shokhin and Anatoli Chubais. Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev was also kept on. No changes were announced in the key Interior, Defense...
...British government's abrupt announcement that it would close 31 of the country's 50 active coal mines seemed at first only a political blunder. Industry and Trade Minister Michael Heseltine's decision last October drew public and parliamentary fury that forced him to announce that, on second thought, only 10 mines would be closed in the short term. In the judgment of Britain's High Court, even that order was "unlawful and irrational," since Heseltine failed to consult with miners and unions as required by law. The government must start its closure proceedings all over again...
...state of Alaska made an abrupt about-face on its plan to destroy hundreds of gray wolves next year. In an effort to attract more tourists and big-game hunters, state officials had announced in November that they would cull the state's 7,000-member wolf population (wolves are not endangered in Alaska). They argued that the move was needed to boost the number of caribou and moose on which the wolf packs generally feed. But a growing boycott of Alaskan cruises by some of the very tourists the state had meant to attract forced officials to cancel their...
...Hoffa. The R stood for Riddle, and David Mamet's lean script is content to leave him at that. Hoffa does stuff -- bullies management, connives with the Mob -- but who is he? The movie gives not a clue. Jack Nicholson looks eerily like his subject, and he has the abrupt gestures and staccato voice of a man who overcomes lack of eloquence by force of will. But director Danny DeVito, who also plays Hoffa's closest ally, gets way too fond of slo-mo shots and swooping cameras; instead of a hard-edge portrait, we get painting on velvet...