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| WOMEN TODAY |
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 Christian Science Monitor
Americans wonder if golf has 'grass ceilings' 4-10-03
Surely, when Woods uncoils his first bolo-whip drive into the thick Georgia morning, a hush will fall over the gallery assembled to see if he wins an unprecedented third consecutive Masters. Not far away, though, women's rights advocate Martha Burk will be shouting, and cameras will be rolling.
The cause of her protest has become as much a subject of lunch-break conversation as the tournament itself: Augusta National has no women members. The tumult this has created hints at questions that reach beyond the fairways and fringes of Augusta. For the second time in little more than a decade, it has left Americans to wonder whether golf has a grass ceiling.
As a result of the gender controversy at today's Masters, the Thunderbirds - who have run the Phoenix Open since 1932 - are considering adding female members to the legendary service organization.
Scott Henderson, the Thunderbirds Big Chief, said that the debate between Martha Burk and William "Hootie" Johnson over adding female members to the Augusta National Golf Club "has spurred some discussion of whether we should be more diverse."
Washington Times
Pentagon steamed at Bush's choice for postwar Iraq 4-10-03
Veteran foreign-service officer Barbara Bodine's appointment as a key player in Iraq's transitional government has angered Defense Department officials and federal law-enforcement authorities who believe that as U.S. ambassador to Yemen, she blocked an FBI investigation into the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole.
Working through a number of channels, including the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the Senate, several high-ranking federal authorities are calling on President Bush to rescind the appointment.
Miss Bodine, a "diplomat in residence" at the University of California at Santa Barbara, was named last month by Mr. Bush as director of relief and reconstruction for central Iraq, based in Baghdad.
Shreveport Times
Women have long history of service 4-10-03
While Operation Iraqi Freedom has pulled the gender debate off the shelf with the unprecedented public access to battle details, it is not the first time women have died or become prisoners of war in battle.
In America's first bout with Iraq, 13 women died. Some of them were killed by enemy fire and three were killed by an Iraqi Scud missile attack. Twenty-one women were wounded in action and two were taken as prisoners of war.
Officially, the history of women in the military in the 20th century begins with the Army Nurse Corp in 1901. More than a million women served during wartime. However, that does not account for thousands of women who served since the country's birth.
When speaking to women's groups, Executive Women's Golf Association founder Nancy Oliver uses a term that always connects with her audience.
"The Look."
"I pause and I look around the room and I say, 'You all know what I'm talking about, right?' " Oliver said last week. "I say, 'Is there any woman in this room who doesn't know what I'm talking about when I talk about 'The Look'? Never once has a hand been raised."
"The Look" -- often accompanied by "The Groan" -- can happen in a pro shop when a woman walks in.
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WOMEN
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Asahi Shimbun
Panel eyes law to foster women execs 4-10-03
Fewer Japanese women hold managerial positions compared with their counterparts abroad and new legislation should be enacted to address the discrepancy, according to a report by the Cabinet Office's Council for Gender Equality.
The report, which offers suggestions for increasing the number of women in managerial-level posts, was compiled by a committee of independent experts and submitted Tuesday to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
The government should plan to increase the number of women in managerial-level positions across various fields, including in government, companies and research institutes, to 30 percent by 2020, the report said.
Bangkok Post
Songkran Festival: Women told to lose revealing sphaghetti tops, strapless outfits 4-10-03
"Strapless and spaghetti-strapped outfits can be worn any time of the year except Songkran when we are supposed to show off Thai culture,'' said Ms Natthanon, who wore the suggested outfit at a ceremony to promote good Songkran practices at Khao San, the most famous spot for the water festival.
Attending the ceremony were Culture Minister Uraiwan Thienthong and senior culture officials. Mrs Uraiwan, who championed the issue, remained tight-lipped after being bombarded with criticism.
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| THINKING
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Japan Today
Women are key to changing Middle East 4-10-03
By Jean-Pierre Lehmann
Whatever the results of this war, the emancipation of the women of the region would amount to a great Arab victory.
The question of how to rebuild Iraq looms in the minds of policymakers around the world. How would it be possible to ensure long-term economic development and turn Iraq into a model for the development of the Middle East?
Atlanta Constitution
Women fit for front lines? Ask Jessica Lynch 4-9-03
By Mary Schulken
The nation has absorbed with deep admiration the compelling details of Lynch's rescue from the Saddam Hospital near Nasiriya. Navy SEALS and Army Rangers, acting on an intelligence tip, stormed the building April 1 and extracted her. It was a welcome moment of triumph in a war that has often brought disappointment and unrelenting bad news.
But the heroics that carried Lynch to safety are only half the story. Her own mettle should be celebrated with equal distinction. For how this young woman soldier behaved in the face of grave danger rebuts the notion that women cannot bear the burdens of combat.
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| WOMEN'S HEALTH |
ABC News Australia
Researchers link pregnant women's diet and disease 4-10-03
Women obsessed with staying slim may be condemning their children to heart disease, stroke and diabetes in later life.
David Barker, director of the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit at Southampton University, in southern England, said many chronic disorders originated in the very earliest stages of life through poor nutrition in the womb.
Yet new research monitoring the eating habits of 12,000 women in Southampton aged 20 to 34 years showed 40 per cent were eating an unhealthy diet.
Researchers from the University of Alabama are hopeful that their discovery could benefit post-menopausal women who wish to take oestrogen to reduce blood pressure but are fearful of side effects, such as an increased risk of ovarian cancer.
Their research suggests that a diet including grape seed extract can reduce salt-sensitive hypertension to around the same extent as treatment with plant oestrogens or the steroid hormone 17beta-estradiol.
San Francisco Chronicle
Calories still count in weight-loss game, studies find 4-9-03
The success of popular low-carbohydrate diets, including the Atkins diet, probably has more to do with how much people eat rather than what they eat.
In the most comprehensive review of published science on the subject to date, researchers reviewed data from more than 100 diet studies, which included a total of 3,268 people. They found that weight loss among people on low-carbohydrate diets results primarily from restricting calories, not from some magic nutritional combination.
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DESIGN STUDIO |
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Talk of rising costs and slipping sales was willfully postposed this week in anticipation of the 42nd Salone Internazionale del Mobile, the world's premier showcase of elegance and daring in contemporary design, which opened yesterday in Milan.
Forward-looking Italian furniture companies know that it is no longer enough to try to sell a plastic chair by having Philippe Starck tart it up with a silly name. The new approach is to have stores in major cities, tie-ins to artists and serious photography in oversize brochures. This is branding the way fashion started doing it 10 years ago. Murray Moss, owner of the Manhattan store Moss, said: "It is no longer sufficient just to make furniture available to people. You have to give it a context, and just hanging on a sign that says 'new' isn't enough."
NYTimes
A House That Any Tree Would Hug 4-10-03
"Buckle up," said Julia Louis-Dreyfus, punching a small square button in the hallway of her newly renovated beach house. Above her a vaultd skylight ribbed with steel slid open with a mechanical hum. "How James Bond is that!" she said, as sunlight and salt air poured in through an eight-foot-square opening.
The retractable roof is one of dozens of energy-efficient contrivances in the oceanfront home north of santa Barbara, Calif., that Ms. Louis-Dreyfus and her husband, Brad Hall, finished remodeling in November.
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STYLE.COM
Vogue and W online
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| CREATORS
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The eloquence of the decorative arts as history's visual storytellers is hard to beat. Nowhere is this fact more in evidence than in an unusual and extraordinarily beautiful platter in the collection of Mexico City's Franz Mayer Museum. Made of tin-glazed earthenware in the town of Puebla about 300 years ago, the wide, heavily ornamented dish speaks volumes.
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AMERICAN
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U.S. troops broke Saddam Hussein's 24-year grip on the Iraqi capital Wednesday as cheering, dancing crowds shouted, "Oh, Iraq!" and, with help from the Marines, toppled a four-story statue of the president, dragging its head in the streets while children pelted it with garbage.
"Victory! We are free!" the crowds called out. "Thank you, President Bush!"
NYTimes
Bush and Blair Speak to Iraqi People in TV Address 4-10-03
President Bush, launching a massive media campaign in war-torn Iraq, said in a nationally televised address Thursday, "Your nation will soon be free," British ally Tony Blair assured Iraqis that coalition soldiers are "friends and liberators, not your conquerors."
The broadcase -- which was to be aired at 6 p.m. Baghdad time Thusday, 10 a.m. EDT -- was part of a campaign to convince Itaqis and the rest of the Arab world that U.S. troops are not a hostile invasion force. There is still widespread opposition to the war throughout much of the world.
A dismayed hush fell over Firdos Square in Baghdad yesterday as a United States marine pulled an American flag over the head of Saddam Hussein's statue like a gallows hood.
The sight also silenced news anchors and many viewers: the tableau of conquest was exactly the image most likely to offend the Muslim world. And it was exactly the image that the administration had most wanted to avoid in its campaign to portray the fall of Baghdad as a popular insurrection.
From Morocco to the Persian Gulf, viewers of Al Jazeera and other Arab television networks sat transfixed by the same images of cheering Iraqis jumping on the ruins of the dictator's statue that fascinated U.S. television watchers.
The vivid images forced viewers for the first time to admit there was no truth behind the bluster of Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, who asserted until Tuesday that no U.S. forces were near Baghdad.
"We discovered that all what the information minister was saying was all lies," government worker Ali Hassan told the Associated Press in Cairo, where many turned off their television sets in disgust at images of U.S. troops in the Iraqi capital.
"Now no one believes Al Jazeera anymore," he said.
BAGHDAD IS finally shed their doubts that Saddam Hussein’s 24-year reign of terror had ended, and took to the streets to celebrate their freedom on Wednesday, amid scenes reminiscent of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The most memorable moment of the day came when a crowd of Iraqis, aided by an American tank-recovery vehicle, toppled a 20-foot high statue of Saddam in one of the city’s main squares, then danced on it and dragged its head through the streets on a rope. As American troops continued to advance through the city, meeting only scattered resistance, its residents came out of their houses to rejoice—and, amid the chaos, to loot. When American soldiers arrived to seize the headquarters of the secret police, they found that locals, having lost their fear of the regime, were already inside, grabbing whatever they could lay their hands on.
NYTimes
Arabs World Shows a Mix of Emotions 4-10-03
Many felt that the first overthrow of a major Middle Eastern government since the fall of the shah of Iran in 1979 would rank among other momentous changes in the region's history, like the Arabs' sudden, bitter defeat in the 1967 war with Israel, or perhaps the assassination of President anwar el-Sadat of Egypt in 1981. This time, however, the memories would be ethched more vividly, because millions of Arabs watched events broadcast live from the legendary city of Baghdad.
Christian Science Monitor
For allied troops, battle of nation building begins 4-10-03
As the cheering echoes through the streets of Baghdad, the conflict in Iraq is entering the crucial next phase - a subtle and shifting mix of urban fighting, police work, and helping Iraqis live in their war-torn land. It is likely to take many months, cost much more than the three-week war has so far, and could well require thousands more coalition troops.
Washington Post
Most Americans Predict More Fighting 4-10-03
An overwhelming majority of Americans predict more tough fighting ahead in Iraq, despite the fall of Baghdad, and also worry that winning the peace may prove to be more difficult than winning the war, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The survey also found that President Bush's overall job approval rating continues to rise in step with the upbeat news from the front. Three in four Americans now approve of the job that Bush is doing as president, his best rating since last June. Eight in 10 support Bush's decision to go to war, and nearly two thirds say the war is going "very well" for the United States -- up 19 percentage point in less than a week.
IRAQ was transformed from a one-party dictatorship into a confusion of competing factions yesterday as ethnic, religious and tribal groups rushed to fill the vacuum left by the ousting of Saddam Hussein.
As American and British forces tried to impose order on the territory captured over the past three weeks, they were faced with the unenviable mission of running a deeply divided nation with no Iraqi leadership capable of assuming power in the near future.
In the run-up to the war to oust Saddam Hussein, President Bush and his aides sometimes acknowledged that the war was about far more than just Iraq.
It was the first step in a new strategy, one that promised, they said, to spread democracy in the Mideast, create a new beginning for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and to send what Mr. Bush called "a clear warning" to other governments "that support for terror will not be tolerated."
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PBS
FRONTLINE
serious tv journalism
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San Francisco Chronicle
GOP wants to keep anti-terror powers; Broad spying tools would become permanent 4-9-03
Congressional Republicans, working with the Bush administration, are maneuvering to make permanent the sweeping anti-terrorism powers granted to federal law enforcement agents after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, officials said Tuesday.
The move is likely to touch off strong objections from many Democrats and even some Republicans in Congress who believe that the Patriot Act, as the legislation that grew out of the attacks is known, has already given the government too much power to spy on Americans.
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