Word: gainful
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Journalists covering the Afghan war rely heavily on coalition forces to gain access to a hardscrabble backcountry populated by Taliban militants. So the reaction was far from muted when the news broke last week that the Defense Department was paying a controversial private firm to profile reporters seeking to accompany - or "embed" - with troops. Reporters quickly complained that it was tantamount to building a blacklist and that the U.S. military was deliberately working to sideline journalists critical of its mission...
...that said its purpose was to "gauge the expected sentiment of [the reporter's] work while on an embed mission in Afghanistan." Military officials in Afghanistan quickly downplayed the charges, explaining that the profiles were not an attempt to rate reporters or news outlets but rather a way to gain background information to better equip officers for interviews and help public-affairs officers gauge likely areas of interest. Rendon said the same in a statement. Access has never been denied based on previous reporting, it insisted. Nevertheless, Rendon's contract will be terminated as of Sept. 1. (See pictures...
However, journalists who have had frustrating experiences trying to gain access suspect that the profiling may have played a part. A freelance TV producer for al-Jazeera who asked to remain anonymous says he applied for four different embeds with U.S. forces in early February. After multiple delays over the course of several months, three of the requests were canceled. The fourth was finally approved a half a year later, but only when he bypassed military public affairs and directly contacted the officer in charge of the unit he wished to embed with. According to reports, the Rendon Group...
...Hong Kong's Hang Seng China Enterprises Index is probably a more realistic reflection of expectations about the direction of China's economy. It advanced only 45.8% from January to July this year. The sell-off in Shanghai trimmed that gain to 35.6% as of Aug. 31 - a strong gain, but hardly the stuff of bubbles...
...Germany's political landscape grows less divided along old Cold War lines, the power of the smaller parties is increasing, and that, the left-leaning daily Tageszeitung noted on Monday, could make it impossible for Merkel's CDU and FDP to gain a majority in September. "The only thing that is certain is that nothing is certain," the paper wrote. "Now it is clear that we have a five-party system, which in the end could result in a return of the Grand Coalition [between...