Word: makeshift
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...wrecked when we get back from patrol that it does a world of good to kick back and eat a doughnut - it's almost like normal life," says Private Matt Collins, as he fries a fresh batch in an empty artillery can. The makeshift stove is fueled with wood salvaged from packing crates. Bread rolls stuffed with canned cheese and chilies are laid out on a stretcher to rise. The flour is sifted through a mosquito net. Once the doughnuts are done the bread rolls will be next; they are closed in a metal box that once held illumination rounds...
...Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The new Interior Minister, Roberto Maroni, is the No. 2 official of the Northern League, a party which takes a hard line against immigration. He pledged further police action against illegal immigrants to fend off growing fears of vigilante justice: earlier this week, the makeshift quarters of Roma, or Gypsies, were set afire near Naples, forcing them to flee for their safety...
...Burma today, the overwhelming sense is that the regime is more concerned with keeping foreigners out than allowing aid in. But unless international relief arrives quickly, the death toll of Cyclone Nargis will skyrocket. Already, disease is beginning to stalk makeshift refugee camps set up in monasteries and schools. In Laputta, 58 refugee camps have been set up for tens of thousands of dazed villagers who have nowhere else to go; the local hospital reports that one-quarter of new patients have diarrhea, a potential harbinger of killer epidemics. A Rangoon doctor says his hospital has run out of fully...
...days of taking power in January 2003, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva flew his team of ministers to the three poorest municipalities in Brazil - he wanted the political elite to take a firsthand look at the living conditions of the impoverished voters that had elected them. On a makeshift stage in Brazil's northern scrubland, Lula, like a triumphant band leader, presented his troupe one by one. The crowd welcomed them all politely, but cheered raucously for Benedita da Silva, the black, former housemaid who picked to oversee Lula's social programs, for Culture Minister Gilberto...
...Likun, 56, has seen nothing of government aid. He, his mother and brothers escaped from their three-story house outside Dujiangyan as it crumbled in the quake. Now they are living on a sidewalk underneath a large red, blue and white plastic tarp. These makeshift tents are everywhere in the city, used by people whose homes were destroyed or who are too scared of the regular aftershocks to spend a night in a building. "Nobody has been here to help us," Fu says...