Word: contractive
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...Sharks' precarious finances were thrown into further turmoil this year when a major sponsor, a fertilizer and fireproof-material conglomerate called Xiyang Group, pulled out of a contract two years early. If Yao's ownership deal does go through, as expected, it's not clear how much input Yao will have in shaping the team. Although he is a product of the state-run sports machine that still dictates much of the Sharks' athletic direction, Yao has, in the past, issued oblique criticisms of the creativity-stunting and motivation-sapping style of Chinese hoops. Even if he takes the helm...
...deaths of 11 French naval engineers in a 2002 bomb blast in Pakistan. Initially blamed on Islamist extremists, the bombing, French investigators now believe, was likely the work of Pakistani military intelligence officials angry that France had stopped the payment of a kickback connected to a $1 billion submarine contract between Paris and Islamabad. (See a TIME video on Buddhist monks...
...speculate that in 2000, when France applied an international anticorruption convention banning all kickbacks, those Pakistani officials grew angry. French authorities suspect that members of Pakistan's overlapping military, intelligence and political circles then decided to settle their score by symbolically targeting the French submarine engineers tied to the contract, manipulating extremists whom Pakistan has long been accused of supporting to carry out the suicide bombing. Pakistan has denied all the accusations; a spokeswoman for President Ali Zardari calls them "farcical at best." (Read "Mounting Terror in Algeria...
...intelligence expert who has done contract work for the CIA says many in Langley feel Panetta, who had only weeks before testified that the agency did not lie to Congress, was acting "to protect his own skin," rather than in the agency's best interests. "He was looking to make sure nobody could accuse him of knowing about this program and being complicit in keeping it from Congress," says the official. (For his part, Panetta might well argue that it was the agency that misled and embarrassed him in the first place...
...four BRICs even held their first summit meeting. But Russia, a resource-rich land with an otherwise feeble economy and a shrinking population, is in a different boat from its BRIC brethren. It's having a horrible year, with the World Bank predicting that its GDP will contract 7.9%, worse than that of any other top-15 economy...