Word: harsh
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...danger does not only come from drug lords and the Taliban. Afghan journalists say their government is not making reporting any easier. Islamic hard liners, former warlords and corrupt officials, they explain, are behind an increasingly harsh assault on press freedom - one of the country's key post-Taliban achievements - that has spawned an increasing amount of self-censorship. A recent report by the Afghan Independent Journalists' Association said that over the past year, 25 journalists were arrested, 24 were beaten or intimidated by public officials, 22 received death threats and four outlets were forced to close. Rahimullah Samandar, head...
...advisable. They don't have to worry about reimbursements that overvalue radiological tests and invasive prostate treatments, undervalue preventive care and watchful waiting and put zero value on returning a phone call or thinking about a case. "We've been able to buffer our staff from the harsh realities of the system, so they can concentrate on patient needs," says Dawn Milliner, a kidney doctor who oversees clinical practice throughout Mayo. "But it's not clear how long we can keep doing that...
...That's the bad news about Mayo's success: it's not sustainable. The harsh reality is that smart, conservative, data-driven, patient-focused medicine is not necessarily profitable medicine. Last year, Mayo lost $840 million on $1.7 billion in Medicare work. It compensated by charging private insurers a premium for the Mayo name, but they're starting to balk. "The system pays more money for worse care," says Mayo CEO Denis Cortese. "If it doesn't start paying for value instead of volume, it will destroy the culture of the organizations with the best care. We might have...
...Korea has become his first foreign policy crisis. To force itself to the top of Obama's agenda, the North has resorted to just about every nasty tactic short of war - testing both a long-range rocket and a nuclear bomb, arresting two American journalists and sentencing them to harsh prison terms. With such provocations, North Korea seems intent on establishing that it is more dangerous than ever. Kim Jong Un is at least part of the reason...
...Ahead of the Beijing Olympics last year environmental officials came under harsh criticism that they were tweaking pollution data to artificially raise the number of so-called "blue sky" days when emissions fall below official targets. American environmental consultant Steven Q. Andrews accused the government of switching to monitoring stations in lower pollution areas, changing the makeup of the air pollution index to focus on less prevalent pollutants, and reporting a disproportionately large number of days with pollution measurements just below the "blue sky" cutoff. Du Shaozhong, the deputy head of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau, denied the allegations...