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| WOMEN TODAY |
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Julie G. Richardson, a vice chairwoman of J.P. Morgan chase and one of the top women in investment banking on Wall Street, is leaving to join the guyout firm of Providence Equity Partners.
Ms. Richardson, who also served as the chairwoman of the telecommunications, media and technology group at J.P. Morgan, planned to announce her departure today in a memorandum to employees. She will become a managing director and oversee a new Manhattan office for Providence Equity, which invests mostly in media and communication companies. The firm, which manages more than $5 billion, is based in Providence, R.I., and has an office in London.
The study of racial and gender diversity in the six-county Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area -- Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Washington and Westmoreland counties -- shows that blacks and women "are not well represented" in Congress, the state Legislature, mayor's offices, municipal councils and school boards.
The report, to be released today at a Downtown news conference, was commissioned by Sustainable Pittsburgh, a 3-year-old public policy group that focuses on economic, ecological and social equity issues.
 Eureka Alert
Minority women perceive IT as way to promised land 4-16-03
Minority women in low-income communities perceive information technology (IT) as a means of escaping poverty -- their first step on the road to upward mobility, says a Penn State researcher.
In contrast, highly educated, middle-class and professional women view IT as offering fewer opportunities for advancement, suggesting that IT and gender studies shouldn't focus on women as a homogenous group, said Dr. Lynette Kvasny, assistant professor of information sciences and technology.
"If you're talking about developing programs in technology training, it's important to understand the history and culture of the people you are working with and not just implement a standardized curriculum," Kvasny said. "Populations of women have different and competing perceptions about technology's potential impact on their life experiences."
. . . William W. (Hootie) Johnson made a statement in a private meeting that would appear to pretty much put the campaign Martha Burk espouses to rest. The chairman of Augusta National, the golf club that created the Masters Tournament in 1934, put in strong terms the position of the club regarding women's membership.
"There never will be a female member, six months after the Masters, a year, 10 years, or ever," he said, backing up what he had said at his annual news conference last Wednesday: "If I drop dead right now, our position will not change on this issue," he said then. "It's not my issue alone."
Washington Times
Study urged of military mothers' absence 4-15-03
Pentagon data showing that more than half the military's 200,000 women are mothers has prompted family-advocacy groups to seek creation of a presidential commission to study the effects of mothers' absence on children.
The groups also want the panel to determine whether military benefits create incentives for out-of-wedlock births, and to examine historical and anthropological records regarding the treatment of mothers in times of war.
The fall of Baghdad and the apparent collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime may have reduced the worries for many Americans, but for couples like theTompon,th day ae sill onmed ith fear, loneliness and pain.
She recognizes that one of the most dangerous aspects for the marines -- policing a potentially hostile population -- is just beginning. He shares her concerns about his safety, and worries that the longer he is away, the more time it is going to take to rebuild their relationship.
LATimes
From the Front to the Inbox 4-15-03
War fighters and their families half a world away are e-mailing one another from battlefields, aircraft carriers and desert encampments, an unplanned — and unprecedented — benefit of modern warfare.
Some of the missives are everyday queries. Is the lawn getting mowed? How's that new asthma medicine? Other e-mails capture regret over sharp words and a desire for reconciliation. For Anne and Vince, their missives are chronicles of a relationship deepening with the trials of war.
"Minority women are starting new businesses 2-to-1 over white women, while minorities, especially blacks, are achieving more every year," said Edie Fraser, president of Business Women's Network and Diversity Best Practices, which will release the 908-page reference book next month. "This has to be a wake-up call for America, when it sees that women and minorities are now controlling the economy."
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WOMEN
INTERNATIONAL |
Iran Mania
Women's civil rights law to be reformed 4-16-03
There are three different projects ongoing in three different organizations for amending the women's civil rights law.
The head of the Participation Center for Women said that a project called the "comprehensive study of women's judicial and legal system" will be implemented this year, the site www.womeniniran.com reported.
U.S. women executives shared ideas and advice with a group of aspiring business women in Afghanistan Tuesday in a special, video-linked conference.
A cross-section of enterprising women in Afghanistan spanning the textile, carpet and media industries had the chance both to ask questions and hear tips from American women about management skills, the Internet and business strategies in the session.
Fortune Magazine editor-at-large, Patricia Sellers, recently traveled to Afghanistan. She said that many women executives in the United States may not be experts in handicrafts or textiles. But they want to help Afghan women overcome the hardships endured under the oppressive Taleban regime and decades of war.
Anneli Jaeaetteenmaeki will head a coalition of her own Centre Party, the Social Democrats and the Swedish People's Party.
Her appointment means Finland becomes the only country in Europe to have women as both prime minister and president.
Ms Jaeaetteenmaeki also said she wants half her cabinet ministers to be women.
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| THINKING
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NYTimes
We Could Use More Burks 4-16-03
By George Vecsey
VOX populi says Martha Burk failed beause only 40 protesters showed up outside the Masters golf tournament last Saturday.
Numbers, however, were never the goal. Burk got people talking. She got under their skin. She connected the dots between the lub and its powerful members. That was the point.
Not to compare one musty old-boy network to the civil rights movement, but back in the early 60's people proclaimed failure every time somebody got doused with kethup and tossed into the street during a lunch-counter demonstration.
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| WOMEN'S HEALTH |
NYTimes
Quest for Weight-Loss Drug Takes an Unusual Turn 4-15-03
Recently, in what might seem an odd twist, researchers have been studying weight loss in people taking two drugs already on the market, but approved for a completely different use, to treat epilepsy. Both drugs, Zonegran and Topamax, are also used to prevent migraine headaches. Zonegran is made by Elan Pharmaceuticals, and Topamax by Ortho-McNeil, a unit of Johnson & Johnson. The weight-loss potential of both drugs was discovered almost by accident, when people taking them for epilepsy or migraines noticed that they were dropping weight without trying.
BBC News
Expert warns of sex disease crisis 4-15-03
Writing in the medical journal, Sexually Transmitted Infections, Professor Adler, of the Royal Free and University College Medical School, London, paints a dismal picture of the nation's declining sexual health over the past decade.
He points to the government's failure to deliver on all the sexual health targets set out in its publication, The Health of the Nation, in 1992.
There has been an upsurge in chlamydial and gonococcal bacterial infections of well over 70% since 1997.
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DESIGN STUDIO |
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NYTimes
Designers With Big Dreams Line Up to Show Their Work 4-15-03
The 550 hopefuls queued up at the Henri Bendel employees' entrance on West 55 Street in a parade that stretched a full city block, past Harry Winston and down Fifth Avenue. If early morning commuters gaped in amazement at this curious assembly, the buyers inside the store had their heads down, their Polaroids ready and their notepads and businesss cards neatly stacked. "We actually find people this way," said Anna Garner, the store's fashiohn director.
In a business that has come to seem increasingly hermetic, with fewer corporate entities dominating a shrinking retail landscape, it is sometimes hard to remember the crucial role played by serendipity. Years ago, the open see was a staple of stores' buying practices.
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STYLE.COM
Vogue and W online
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Cultural institutions also appear conflicted about the value of fashion as an art form or a mirror of society, and not only in wartime. On May 1, the ostume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is opening an exhibit called "Goddess," but in recent years the only goddess deemed worthy enough to be shown in the upstairs galleries, and not the dungeon of the Costume Institute, was Jacqueline Kennedy. As it is, most museums and universities that devote serious stud to clothes don't use the fword fashion. They say "costume" or "dress", but certainly not the F-word.
All of which is why the Frick Collection deserves praise for its exhibition, "Whistler, Women and Fashion" which opens next Tuesday. . .
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Washington Times
Terrorist Abu Abbas caught in Iraq 4-16-03
U.S. Special Forces in Baghdad have captured long-sought Middle East terrorist Abu Abbas, known for organizing the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship in which elderly American passenger Leon Klinghoffer was murdered.
Another major target of U.S. Special Forces in Iraq is Abdul Rahman Yasin, who is wanted by the FBI for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Yasin was known to be in Iraq as of last year, U.S. officials said.
Iraqi exile leaders, tribal sheiks, ethnic Kurds and Shiite clerics gathered in a tent near the birthplace of Abraham today and said they would work to create a fully democratic government in Iraq.
Meeting under heavy security at Tallil Air Base here in the presence of American, British and Polish diplomats, the Iraqis alled for an end to the violence and looting that have ravaged the country since the collapse of President Saddam Hussein's government. They issued a statement that included 13 points outlining how they would seek to establish a "federal system" under leaders hosen by the Iraqi people and not "imposed from outside."
Washington Times
Powell says peace map won't change 4-16-03
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday that the United States would not amend a proposed "road map" for Middle East peace before it is released, despite lobbying by senior Israeli officials in Washington this week.
"The road map will be released to the parties after Mr. Abu Mazen is confirmed," Mr. Powell said in reference to the Palestinian prime minister-designate, whose legal name is Mahmoud Abbas. "And it will be the road map draft that was finished last December."
Some of the Marines began to worry that the tip about U.S. prisoners was a ssetup for an ambush. "We thought it could be a 'Black Hawk Down' situation," said (Lance Cpl. Curney) Russell, recalling the 1993 raid that turned into an ambush in Mogadishu, Somalia, in which militiamen killed 18 U.S. soldiers.
Unable to find the house and leery of a trop, their commander prepared to order them to withdraw. Then a man with a light beard in dingy yellow pajamas peered out from a house, trying to get their attention.
"I'm an American," he called out, quietly but urgently.
Homeward bound, on the back of trucks packed with tires, diesel cans, blankets, pillows and plastic toys — but most of all with humanity — tens of thousands of people who had run away from the Iraqi capital when the fighting started were coming back.
They were seeing their city for the first time since the war: the burned-out shells of tanks and overturned buses lining the roads, the destroyed telephone exchanges, the portraits of Saddam Hussein painted over or raked with gunfire, the unbelievable sight of U.S. tanks rumbling through their streets, topped by grinning soldiers offering friendly waves.
NYTimes
Now Free to Protest, Iraqis Complain About Americans 4-16-03
Protests against the Amerian forces here are rising by the day as iraqis exercise their new right to complain -- something that often landed them in prison or worse during President Saddam Hussein's rule.
But no one here is in the mood to note that paradox, as Iraqis confront with greater clarit their complicated reactions to the week-old american military presence here: anger at the looting; frustration at the ongoing lack of everything from electricity to a firm sense of order; fear of long-term United States military occupation.
BBC
Gulf states warn US over Syria 4-16-03
Six key pro-Western Gulf Arab states have called on the United States to stop threatening Syria in the wake of the war in Iraq.
The Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) - whose members control nearly half the world's known oil reserves - also said that setting up a transitional government in US-occupied Iraq was an urgent priority.
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PBS
FRONTLINE
serious tv journalism
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Actor Tim Robbins pleaded with listeners at the National Press Club yesterday to "defy the intimidation that is visited upon us daily in the name of national security and warped notions of patriotism" after calling some members of the press "Aussie gossip rags" and "talk-radio patriots."
Mr. Robbins took special aim at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, whose president canceled his appearance at an April 26 anniversary fete in Cooperstown, N.Y., for the 1988 movie "Bull Durham" because of antiwar remarks made by him and his live-in partner, actress Susan Sarandon. The Hall received 5,000 e-mail messages from people for and against its decision
Economist
Bush changes tack 4-16-03
As ever, Mr Bush seems determined to avoid the mistakes made during his father’s presidential term. In 1991, George Bush senior waited six months after the end of the first Gulf war to send an economic package to Congress. The war had been judged a great success. But, ultimately, the first Bush administration paid the price for taking its eye off the ball. Voters care more about their economic well-being than they do about foreign-policy issues. That was something the Clinton team recognised in the 1992 election campaign with their motto: “it’s the economy, stupid”. The current president also realises that the success of his domestic agenda will largely determine who wins the election in November 2004.
Christian Science Monitor
Park the cause in Harvard Yard 4-15-03
Palmer pauses to allow the thunderous applause to dissipate. As the professor of one of Harvard's most popular courses, "Globalization and Human Values: Envisioning World Community," Palmer is a celebrity of sorts across campus. His accessibility is almost unrivaled (his home number is at the bottom of every e-mail he sends to his 522 students), and his powerful lectures and selection of notable guest speakers always draw a crowd.
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Washington Post
U.S. Forces Will Redploy Into 3 Zones 4-16-03
The 1st Marine Division, now controlling the eastern side of Baghdad, will withdraw and begin heading south, while the Army's V corps will cross the Tigris River to take over the entire Iraqi capital, military officials said.
The Marines, aided by British allies, control southeastern Iraq and will take over the entire southern half of the country, while the Army will relieve them in former president Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit and occupy the northern half. Eventually, Baghdad will fall under the supervision of the land commander, Army Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, who is
moving his base to the capital from Kuwait.
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