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| WOMEN TODAY |
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 Washington Post
Clinton Develops Into a Force in the Senate 3-5-03
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, after lying low for most of her first two years, is emerging as one of the Senate's most prominent and influential Democrats, moving aggreessively on fundraising and policy matters and fueling speculation that she plans to run for president in 2008.
New York's junior senator also is commanding greater influence over the party's base of trial lawters, environmentalists, union workers and abortion rights activists through her new leadership assignment: chairman of the Democratic Steering Committee, a Senate organization that helps promote the party's agenda. Leading senators tapped Clinton for the job of revving up party activists and enlisting their help in attacking President Bush and congressional Republicans. She brought civil rights leaders to Washington last week to discuss a broader campaign against Bush judicial nominee Miguel Estrada.
A bill to spend as much as $400 million to process thousands of these kits, which are supplied to emergency health facilities in sealed containers to collect evidence during a victim's medical exam, will be introduced this month in the Senate.
Unprocessed rape kits are sitting in evidence rooms throughout the nation because of a lack of state and local funds to process them, bill supporters say. The processing cost can range from a couple hundred dollars a kit to $2,000, depending on the circumstances of the attack.
Girl Scouts? What's an organization known for squeaky-clean values and selling cookies doing bringing girls into a state prison? Changing with the times, that's what, and helping the Scouts get to know their mothers, some of whom have been incarcerated for years.
NYTimes
Men and Women Aren't Alike. Really. 3-4-03
Men are selfish pigs. And there aren't enough of them to go around.
At least that's what Andrew Hacker suggests in his depressing new book "Mismatch," a glib, didactic book that uses sometimes dubious methodology to ratify women's worst fears about dating and marriage and the opposite sex.
In much the same way that he asserted in his controversial 1992 book "Two Nations" that America continued to suffer from a bitter and deeply entrenched white-black racial divide, so Mr. Hacker argues in these pages
BBC News
Lip size key to sexual attraction 3-4-03
Scientists have found that the size of somebody's lips plays a key role in determining whether they are sexually attractive to other people.
Basically, the bigger the better - but, in a warning to those who are thinking about opting for surgical enhancement, it is possible for somebody to have lips that are too big.
The technique separates sperm into two groups -- those that carry the X-chromosome (which leads to a female baby) and those that carry the Y-chromosome (which produces a male baby). The process was developed in the early 1990s by the Genetics & IVF Institute in Fairfax, and last week's opening of a MicroSort laboratory in Laguna Hills marks the company's first expansion.
The expansion brings with it not only a seemingly effective way to select a child's gender -- it also highlights a host of ethical and practical considerations that accompany sex selection, especially for the majority of families who use the technique for nonmedical reasons.
SunSpot.net (Baltimore)
In Iraq war, women would serve closer to front lines than in past 3-3-03
Changes in law and policy since the Persian Gulf war have opened up thousands more positions to women. In Iraq, women would serve in greater numbers, closer to front-line combat and more integrated into core operations than in any previous U.S. military conflict.
Unlike the gulf war of 1991, women would probably be in the cockpits of fighter jets, bombers and Apache attack helicopters during an opening air assault. And women such as Jenni would probably be in armed reconnaissance aircraft that scout enemy troops and targets.
WashingtonTimes
Abortion sides upset at plans for funds 3-3-03
A Bush administration decision to provide funding from an expanded AIDS program to overseas clinics that also promote abortion has roiled both sides in the long-standing battle over abortion policy.
To pro-life forces, the decision overturns an effort going back to the Reagan administration to deny U.S. taxpayer funds to organizations that fund or promote abortions overseas, such as Planned Parenthood.
But pro-choice groups are upset that groups accepting the funds will be prohibited from discussing abortion with patients while carrying out AIDS counseling funded by the United States. Such groups are calling the plan "expensive, unwelcome and immoral."
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WOMEN
INTERNATIONAL |
NYTimes
Rights Group Calls for End to Inheriting African wives 3-5-03
When a Kenyan woman loses her husband, she also frequently loses her home, her land, her cows and all her other household property. What the widow gains, whether she likes it or not, is a new husband, frequently her brother-in-law.
Human Rights Watch issued a report today condemning the traditional African practice of wife inheritance, in which a widow is transferred to a male relative of her deceased husband. Typically the new husband takes
IN the largest simultaneous public appointment exercise undertaken in recent years, the Northern Ireland Policing Board today appointed over 200 people to sit as independent members on the province's new District Policing Partnerships.
The DPPs, autonomous bodies within the 26 local council areas, will work to give voice to community views on policing.
Across the country, 127 women were appointed; in one area all nine independent members are women.
Love, fellow-feeling, understanding and empathy are the positive aspects inherent in peace. Incidentally these are the very qualities intrinsic to women’s nature and when given due recognition, these become the empowering influences transforming women’s vulnerability and victim status into women’spower. As Martha Segna, the peace activist, puts it, "we will never have peace through a military solution – never." What is required is to build a "culture of peace" in which women should be given the central role to play.
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| THINKING
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NYTimes
Protect Women, Stop a disease 3-3-03
More money to fight AIDS is both welcome and necessary. But its effectiveness depends on how well it helps the primary victims of AIDS in the most highly affected areas: women and teenage girls.
Fifty percent of those infected worldwide, and 58 percent of AIDS victims in sub-Saharan Africa, are women. If we are serious about combating this plague, women must be empowered so that they can defend themselves against the men who are infecting and abandoning them. The administration has failed to do anything significant in this critical area.
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| WOMEN'S HEALTH |
Washington Post
Contraceptive Sponge Back on the Market 3-4-03
The Today Spinge contraceptive is back on the market, eight years after it deisappeared from U.S. drugstore shelves in a turn depicted in a "Seinfeld" episode.
More sponges, prices at the U.S. equivalent of about $2.90 each, will arrive at 4,000 pharmacies, Wal-Marts and other stores across Canada, according to Allendale. The manufacturer is hoping for Food and Drug Administration approval to sell them in U.S. stores within a year.
BBC News
HRT 'can protect the heart'3-4-03
Hormone replacement therapy can protect against heart disease but only if women take it at a particular point in their lives, a study suggests.
Scientists in the US believe HRT can help to prevent heart attacks if women start taking it before their own body stops producing oestrogen.
women need not shun hormone replacement therapy in all cases, a new study says.
BBC News
Women 'wired for worry' 3-3-03
Researchers
Women have lower levels of a crucial enzyme
The biochemistry of women's brains makes them more vulnerable to stress and anxiety, researchers have found.
They have shown that women have lower levels of a brain chemical that controls anxiety.
Having less of the chemical, an enzyme called COMT, appears to make a person more anxious and highly strung.
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DESIGN STUDIO |
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It's odd hearing Thom Mayne dismiss paper architecture. For much of his career he was famous for being one of the best--and most esoteric--paper architects in the country. He designed brilliant major works--an art center for Emory University; a golf clubhouse in Chiba, Japan; studios for MTV--that were never built, though other architects saw them in magazines like Progressive Architecture. Mayne did build several small projects--mostly homes and restaurants--for the architectural cognoscenti, but, he says, this time was immensely frustrating. He would scream at clients and became famous for his explosive temper. "None of my clients would recommend me," he says. "At the beginning of your work, you're defining who you are artistically. It's intensely confrontational and radical."
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STYLE.COM
Vogue and W online
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| CREATORS
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NYTimes
Four Women Swagger in Milan 3-5-03
Four women closed the Italian fall 2003 season today, their clothes changing the tempo and temperament of fashion. After years of male domination, have the women finally taken over macho Milan?
This is a city that adores the pinup girl clothes seem incapable of containing. Indeed, many television commentators who focus on fashion arrive at the runway presentations in thigh-revealing frocks and with enough cleavage and hair volume to win a Cosmo cover.
Milan put more stock in the name-brand sexy models of the 1980s and early '90s than any other fashion center. Even when most designers in Paris and New York focused on mannequins that were wan or androgynous, Italian designers maintained their affection for the va-va-voom women whose figures could make a mourning dress and veil look like one big come-on.
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In a serious challenge to the Bush administration, the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Russia said in a joint declaration today that they would not permit passage of a Security Council resolution authorizing the use of armed force against Iraq.
In a challenge to the three, Mr. Powell said in an interview with Russian television that the Bush administration was prepared to lead a coalition of willing nations, either under United Nations authoritiy or without United Nations authority, if that turns out to be the case, in order to disarm the Iraqi leader.
Muslim collegians are quickly moving into the leadership of U.S. anti-war protests, such as today's One-Day National Student Strike on 300 high school and college campuses.
Although the "strike" — which ranges from class walkouts to lunchtime lectures — is organized by the secular left-wing National Youth and Student Peace Coalition, many Muslim student groups across the country are providing support and manpower.
Christian Science Monitor
In Minnesota, a town of veterans divides over Iraq War 3-5-03
The issue: an antiwar resolution quietly passed the previous week by the city council during a sparsely attended meeting. The vote made Ely one of more than 100 cities and towns in the US to take a public stand against war with Iraq. Now, with a group of veterans leading the charge as if it were D-Day all over again, most of the residents stuffed into the courtroom wanted to make Ely the first American city to rescind its antiwar resolution.
On a beach by the grey waters of the Black sea, scores of young American airmen are racing against the clock to get ready for war. Surrounded by Kalashnikov-toting Bulgarian military police, fenced in by red corrugated iron, and shrouded by a pine grove, the men of the US air force's 409th air expeditionary group are pioneers in a mission that is reconfiguring decades of the US military presence in Europe and redrawing Europe's military map.
"We're in a rush," said Sergeant Jason Smith, just arrived from Charleston in South Carolina. "Our main role is to support the global war on terror. And we're preparing for future operations."
NYTimes
U.S. Aides Dismiss Moves by Baghdad but Feel Pressure 3-4-03
The White House declared today that Iraq's efforts to destroy missiles and convince the United Nations that it was cooperating with weapons inspectors was "the mother of all distractions." But inside the administration, officials feared efforts to put additional military and diplomatic pressure on Saddam Hussein were becoming more complicated.
Newsweek
Bush and God 3-10-03
George W. Bush rises ahead of the dawn most days, when the loudest sound outside the White House is the dull, distant roar of F-16s patrolling the skies. Even before he brings his wife, Laura, a morning cup of coffee, he goes off to a quiet place to read alone.
HIS TEXT ISN’T news summaries or the overnight intelligence dispatches. Those are for later, downstairs, in the Oval Office. It’s not recreational reading (recently, a biography of Sandy Koufax). Instead, he’s told friends, it’s a book of evangelical mini-sermons, “My Utmost for His Highest.” The author is Oswald Chambers, and, under the circumstances, the historical echoes are loud.. .
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PBS
FRONTLINE
serious tv journalism
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Christin Science Monitor
Celebrating 20 years of Frontline 3-5-03
With television's ever increasing crossover between news and entertainment, with so-called newsmagazines more interested in Michael Jackson's plastic surgeries than nuclear proliferation, and journalists competing with their subjects for celebrity status, PBS's Frontline has been a rare source of meaningful news and current affairs documentaries since 1983. Celebrating Twenty Years of Frontline takes a look at the creation of the series - and at the creations of the series.
Washington Times
Human shields take a powder 3-5-03
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Mr. Chapman is one of an estimated 200 or more Americans, Canadians, Australians and Europeans who have arrived in Baghdad in recent weeks to act as voluntary human shields — prepared to defend civil and humanitarian structures with their lives, if necessary.
About half of those have already left the country in frustration, angered that the Iraqi government demanded they leave low-risk targets, such as hospitals, and instead cluster around electrical plants, water-pumping stations and communications centers, which serve significant military as well as civilian purposes.
LATimes
Senator, His Son Get Boosts From Makers of Ephedra 3-5-03
For more than a decade, the dietary supplements industry has counted on Sen. Orrin G. Hatch to fend off tighter regulation of products such as ephedra, the controversial stimulant linked to more than 80 deaths — most recently a young Baltimore Orioles baseball player.
For its part, the supplements industry has not only showered the senator with campaign money but also paid almost $2 million in lobbying fees to firms that employed his son Scott.
Christian Science Monitor
Bush's bold agenda, soaring stakes 3-5-03
To some, President Bush has taken on an appropriately ambitious agenda - from a war that aims to remake the map of the Middle East to a domestic plan that includes big new tax cuts and a $400 billion prescription-drug plan for senior citizens. Routing Saddam Hussein, a popular goal with Americans, would add a fresh infusion of optimism to the US economy.
To others, Bush is more than proactive: He is taking policy risks that go well beyond what events dictate. The result, skeptics warn, could be a disastrous entanglement in a part of the world most inhospitable to Americans - and a ballooning deficit that could hobble the economy for years to come.
Washington Times
FBI chief assures Muslims, Sikhs of rights protection 3-4-03
The director of the FBI has met with key leaders of national Arab-American, Muslim and Sikh organizations in a continuing outreach effort by the bureau to maintain an open dialogue and reinforce efforts to protect their civil rights.
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NYTimes
Top General Sees Plan to Shock Iraq Into Surrendering 3-5-03
The nation's top military officer said today that the Pentagon's war plan for Iraq entailed shocking the Iraqi leadership into submission quickly with an attack "much, much, much different" from the 43-day Persian Gulf war in 1991.
Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declined to give details. But other military officials have said the plan calls for unleashing 3,000 precision-guided bombs and missiles in the first 48 hours of a short air campaign, to be followed quickly by ground operations.
Washington Post
Foes Giving In to N. Korea's Nuclear Aims 3-5-03
The United States and Asian countries have begun to accept the idea of a nuclear-armed North Korea, according to officials and analysts here and in Washington. Increasingly, the Bush administration is turning its attention to preventing the Communist government in Pyongyang from selling nuclear material to the highest bidder.
Washington Times
U.S. sees mounting support for resolution 3-5-03
The United States said yesterday it is gaining support for a new U.N. Security Council resolution that would pave the way to a war with Iraq and intends to put it to a vote as early as next week.
The Bush administration's optimistic assertions came despite public statements from senior Russian officials, who ruled out an abstention but not a veto, as well as emboldened anti-war rhetoric from China.
LATimes
U.S. Expands Clandestine Surveillance Operations 3-5-03
The Justice Department has stepped up use of a secretive process that enables the attorney general to personally authorize electronic surveillance and physical searches of suspected terrorists, spies and other national-security threats without immediate court oversight.
Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday he has authorized more than 170 such emergency searches since the Sept. 11 attacks -- more than triple the 47 emergency searches that have been authorized by other attorneys general in the last 20 years.
Christian Science Monitor
US diplomatic strategy in Turkey based on outdated roadmap 3-5-03
According to conventional wisdom, there was no question whose arm would fold when Turkey went elbow-to-elbow with its superpower ally. But the conventional wisdom that has shaped ties between the US and Turkey since World War II may have proven to be an outdated playbook for reaching a deal to base tens of thousands of US troops here for a war against Iraq.
Turks say that trying to force their arm - and assuming that it would give way without much resistance - is a strategy that has backfired on the Bush administration. Among the developments that prickled politicians here most: Washington's deadline for an answer before a week-long Muslim holiday, the image of US ships hovering off the coast of Turkey, and American newspaper cartoons depicting Turkey as a slippery rug dealer.
Pakistan says the interrogation of the alleged senior al-Qaeda figure, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, has begun to produce results.
Pakistan's interior minister, Faisal Saleh Hayat, said the suspect is co-operating with interrogators and that his information is being acted upon.
He predicted there would be "significant developments" but gave no details.
On Tuesday, Australia said it also wanted to quiz Sheikh Mohammed in connection with last October's bombings in Bali.
CNN
U.S. orders another 60,000 to Persian Gulf 3-4-03
With the United States beefing up its military might around Iraq, another 60,000 troops -- including all 17,000 soldiers of the U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry Division -- received orders to deploy to the Persian Gulf region, military officials said Monday.
The newly deployed troops would bring the number of forces in the Central Command region to about 310,000. The United States has more than 250,000 troops deployed, of which about 215,000 are in the immediate gulf region.
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