Word: patchwork
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...military's inherent problem with buying a system still in the testing stage. The gun, formally known as DIVAD (division air defense), was designed to protect troops from air attack, but its radar system was unable to locate even hovering helicopters. Although the weapon was mostly a patchwork of proven hardware, the computer that was supposed to coordinate the system never worked properly, and its auxiliary power unit provided a heat target for attacking infrared missiles. Charges of $84 million by the contractor, Ford Aerospace & Communications Corp., have been disputed by the Pentagon, which has already paid $1.8 billion...
...kind. * An immigrant from almost any country can depend on finding transplanted countrymen in the city. But there is also something appealing, it seems, about joining the larger swarm of immigrants in New York, of being on a patch that is in turn part of a patchwork quilt. Where practically everyone is an alien, no one is alien. "There is a feeling of cordiality," says Anand Mohan, a Queens College politics professor from India, "and, for us, a satisfaction in knowing that as immigrants in this city, we are not alone...
...Simpson, a third-generation American (his paternal forebears came from England and Ireland), the current U.S. policy on legal admissions represents an intimidating challenge to that standard. A much amended patchwork based on statutes originally adopted in 1952, the law now sets an annual ceiling of 270,000 on immigrants, with a maximum of 20,000 from any single country. Husbands, wives, parents and children of current U.S. citizens are exempted from limits; last year 273,903 people took advantage of the provision. Within the numerical ceilings, an elaborate series of "preferences" gives priority to other relatives of U.S. citizens...
...Jersey landmark was not binding in other states, of course, and laws on the right to die remain a confused patchwork. Courts have generally but not uniformly ruled that a competent patient has a right to refuse medical treatment (34 states and the District of Columbia recognize "living wills" that forbid extreme treatments). The incompetent and comatose present complex problems. If doctors and families agree to withhold treatment, doctors often quietly practice what they call "judicious neglect," but disagreements still end noisily in court...
Over the years, his activities began to form a patchwork quilt of legend and rumor. He was reported to have masterminded a heroin-trafficking ring in Paraguay; he was said to have been Stroessner's personal physician, as well as the dictator's special adviser in a genocidal campaign against Paraguay's Ache Indians. Like some dark spirit, he seemed to be everywhere at once, often hidden behind sunglasses; he was sighted in Bolivia, Uruguay and Chile, and in the jungles of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay...