Word: fractious
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Marcos could easily have been a hero. When he was first elected President of the Philippines, in November 1965, he had history within his grasp. His uncommon combination of political shrewdness and ironfisted determination gave a strong measure of national identity to the fractious Southeast Asian archipelago. Encountering minimal opposition when he took on dictatorial powers in 1972, Marcos thoroughly reordered Philippine economic and political life, impressing both his people and his key ally, the U.S., with his irreplaceability in one of the most strategic corridors of the world...
That concern, which climaxed last spring with the failure of a masters' plan for partial randomization of some of the houses, appears increasingly likely to be settled by the dean this fall as masters return to the fractious battle lines they drew last spring...
Thus ended the life of Sheik Hassan Khaled, the revered Grand Mufti of Lebanon's 900,000 Sunni Muslims. Sheik Khaled had devoted most of his 68 years to seeking an accommodation between his country's perennially fractious Muslim and Christian populations...
...home and on the road. In the U.S. a conductor must also subject himself (there are no women on the short list) to endless rounds of glad-handing and fund raising, while in Berlin he must have the political skills of a Franz von Papen to deal with a fractious orchestra and a powerful city bureaucracy...
...last week the White House announced a "gentleman's agreement" with Congress to allot $4.5 million a month in humanitarian aid to the Nicaraguan contras for the next eleven months while diplomats work at pushing the Sandinista regime toward democracy. The bargain ends, for the moment at least, a fractious eight-year battle between the Democrat-controlled Congress and the Executive Branch over how to handle Central America. The product of intense lobbying by Secretary of State James Baker, the agreement to fund the contras but not any more fighting may mark a sea change in U.S. policy. "I think...