Word: makeshift
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Public anger bubbled over this summer when 32,000 Cubans fled the island in makeshift rafts. Fidel, shocked and hurt, fell silent after a few television appearances. Raul, concerned that his 180,000 troops would be called upon to put down popular protests, decided the stalemate between reformers and hard- liners had dragged on too long. Food had become a national-security issue, more important than possible political squabbles. In July, at a Communist Party meeting, Raul said, "The risks don't matter as long as there is food for the people." By late summer he had apparently persuaded Fidel...
...been repaired," said Vyacheslav Bibikov, Vice President of the Komi republic, in a testy meeting with reporters last week. "There's no money for it." Rather than stop the flow of oil and lose income, Komineft erected earthworks to contain the gathering crude. When the autumn rains came, the makeshift dikes crumbled, and the oil escaped...
...when Bill Clinton sat down with his top advisers last week to figure out what to do with the thousands of Cuban refugees floating toward Florida on every kind of makeshift raft they could tie together, there seemed no other choice. The President had already insisted he would not let the boat people into the U.S. proper -- that was politically unacceptable -- but the refugee flow swelled rather than ebbed. Blockade the island? Not really; that would be an act of war. Send the refugees back to Castro? Too heartless, and besides, he would not take them...
...getter for him in the past, and he has been disappointed that a Democratic Administration in Washington has not proved more receptive to dealing with him. So Castro let it be known that his police would no longer arrest or even try to stop Cubans attempting to flee by makeshift boat or raft. Ergo, two problems solved at once: angry Cubans were distracted from turning their despair against Fidel, and he certainly got Washington's attention...
...hijacking by the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, the P.R.I.? Finally, Caralampio Amparo Perez, an election official, emerged waving one of his replacement boxes over his head. He had improvised with cookie cartons; each had a hole cut into the side and covered with a plastic bag to create a makeshift window. The voters nodded, and by day's end they and the country had elected Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon Mexico's next President...