Word: ragtag
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...many as 200,000 civilians have been killed by the heavily armed West Pakistani troopers. But soldiers have also suffered severe casualties at the hands of irate peasants. The army controlled the capital of Dacca, the vital ports of Chittagong and Khulna, and several other towns. But a ragtag resistance movement called the Bangla Desh Mukti Fauj (Bengal State Liberation Forces) was reportedly already in control of at least one-third of East Pakistan, including many cities and towns. West Pakistani authorities have almost completely succeeded in obscuring the actual details of the fighting from the outside world by expelling...
...Costa Rica's admirable if not entirely unblemished history of democratic government, no figure stands taller than diminutive (5 ft. 3 in.), scrappy José Figueres Ferrer, 64. At the head of a ragtag band of rebels in 1948, "Don Pepe" routed a Communist military coalition that had tried to seize power illegally. He banned the Communist party, abolished the army (Costa Rica has not had one since), instituted many social reforms and, after 18 months, restored power to the elected President. Figueres was elected to the presidency in his own right in 1953 and again last year. Educated...
...next 20 years he studied war at the head of a ragtag army of freebooters in the Alpine foothills and civil administration as lord of his duchy of Dauphiné. Skill at foreign affairs and espionage he seemed to acquire by osmosis. Stumping around in rough clothes, sneering at courtly chivalry, conferring with his agents (most of whom were disgracefully lowborn), he made the rest of the French nobility decidedly edgy. Even the old Duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good, in whose court Louis occasionally sought refuge, was disconcerted. Duke Philip's idea of style was three dozen mistresses...
...high-ceilinged courtroom where the ceremonies took place was packed with blacks who came to see the ragtag parade and oath taking that symbolized their assumption of power. On the way, the Druid High School Band kept cadence in the cold morning for the dignitaries riding in a mule-drawn wagon and the float covered with green and white napkins topped by a tinfoil telescope that proclaimed "Greene County-Focus of the Nation...
Suggs is now a middle-echelon manager for Jerry Campbell and Tom Scott, two 24-year-olds from Dallas who employ a ragtag army of some 170 flower children to sell carnations on the streets of several cities. The pair first tried the idea six months ago at home as a way of helping some of their jobless friends. The idea paid off so handsomely that Campbell and Scott now have flowers flown in from growers in Colorado, California and Illinois, and have hired young people to sell them in Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, Phoenix, Little Rock, Ark., and Wichita...