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| WOMEN TODAY |
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 Christian Science Monitor
The woman behind the exhaust-free car 4-21-03
Christine Sloane is accustomed to being surrounded by digital sketches of cars shaped like junebugs and SUVs one imagines Buck Rogers driving on Mars.
As a senior engineer at General Motors, Ms. Sloane is supposed to think about cars of the future. Specifically, she's trying to create a new generation of automobiles that are pollution free - and, in effect, render internal-combustion engines obsolete.
The last time anybody blew a lead this big was the '69 Cubs.
Instead of being demoralized, Martha Burk is juiced.
No pity parties, none of this "wait-'til-next-season" stuff for her. The National Council of Women's Organizations boss, whose name rhymes with work, can't wait to get back at it, especially now that she's facing somebody her own size.
"We are moving to a full-fledged corporate campaign," Burk said over the weekend, repeating a vow to make life miserable for any CEO who still belongs to Augusta National Golf Club.
Contra Costa Times
Women directors: Still out of the Hollywood loop? 4-20-03
Even for Nicholson, women are hard to find, at least when it comes to directing a Hollywood movie. Just down the street from Paramount Pictures, home of "What Women Want," was a recent billboard picturing Trent Lott's head superimposed on an Oscar statuette, with the chilling message: "Even the U.S. Senate is more progressive than Hollywood. Female Senators: 14 percent. Female Film Directors: 4 percent." The brainchild of a feminist group known as the Guerrilla Girls, the billboard was aimed at highlighting the paltry number of women filmmakers.
Washington Times
Jail time coming for deadbeat dads 4-20-03
The federal government estimates that $112 billion was owed in child support in 2001. A record $19 billion in child support was collected, but it barely dented the overall debt owed from previous years.
Throughout America, state officials chase down and penalize deadbeat parents — garnishing paychecks, intercepting tax refunds and yanking driver's licenses. Jail is an option, but it's usually reserved as a last resort.
Not so in South Carolina. . .
Seattle Times
League, players can't agree on whether they have a deal 4-20-03
The league and the Women's National Basketball Players Association had differing views of where they stood yesterday, one day after the union announced an agreement in principle on a new labor deal.
The union said the process had reached the stage of lawyers exchanging documents. But the league said negotiations were ongoing.
MSNBC
American air faces union wrath 4-20-03
American Airlines faces bankruptcy concerns again this week — just days after avoiding Chapter 11 — as unions for its flight attendants, ground workers and mechanics threaten to pull back concessions in anger at lucrative payment plans for the AMR Corp. unit’s top brass.
THE THREE MAJOR UNIONS have expressed outrage at news last week of special pension funds for senior management that would be paid even in bankruptcy. The plans came to light in a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission just as workers agreed on Wednesday to pay cuts of 15 percent to 23 percent and thousands of layoffs that would save the world’s largest carrier $1.8 billion a year.
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WOMEN
INTERNATIONAL |
It is notoriously difficult for young women to become senior scientists and have a family. To counteract this loss to science, for the first time this year the European Molecular Biology Organisation (Embo) has awarded six new two-year fellowships to women who have just had children in order to help them restart their career.
The Korea Herald
U.N. expert says peace cuoture will grow if more women gain power 4-20-03
Breines, 57, who has spent the majority of her 20 years with UNESCO at its Paris headquarters on the organization's women and a culture of peace program, argued for the mainstreaming of gender perspectives in order to achieve peace. "It is about analyzing what are the roles men and women play when it comes to building a culture of peace," she said.
Only one percent of the world's governments are headed by women, 10 percent of the world's ministers are women and 13 percent of the world's parliamentarians are women, Breines observed. "It is obvious women are not playing vital roles in decision-making. For example, there are virtually no women ministers of defense or foreign affairs," she said.
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| THINKING
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The Age (Melbourne)
Women must have a voice in new Iraq 4-19-03
By Pamela Boone
If the new Iraq is to become the hoped-for example of democracy and freedom to other Arab states, one of the most effective measures those charged with its rebuilding can take is to encourage the participation of women at every level of society.
This is not only for the benefit of women, though as half the population they are as entitled to liberation as are the men of Iraq. It is also because throughout the world, a very good indication of the quality of life in a country is the status of women in that country.
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| WOMEN'S HEALTH |
Guardian UK
Sugar industry threatens to scupper WHO 4-21-03
In a letter to Gro Harlem Brundtland, the WHO's director general, the Sugar Association says it will "exercise every avenue available to expose the dubious nature" of the WHO's report on diet and nutrition, including challenging its $406m (£260m) funding from the US.
The industry is furious at the guidelines, which say that sugar should account for no more than 10% of a healthy diet. It claims that the review by international experts which decided on the 10% limit is scientifically flawed, insisting that other evidence indicates that a quarter of our food and drink intake can safely consist of sugar.
BBC News
Gene hope for diabetics 4-21-03
Scientists from the United States and Japan have successfully treated diabetic mice by inserting healthy genes in the animals.
This new form of gene therapy, reported in the journal Nature Medicine, could lead to a novel approach for treating the growing problem of diabetes.
Women and heart disease? Better believe it. For while most people still think of cardiovascular trouble as mainly a man's problem, the reality is that heart disease has never discriminated between the sexes. In fact, for a variety of complex reasons, the condition is more often fatal in women than in men and is more likely to leave women severely disabled by a stroke or congestive heart failure. True, women don't usually start showing signs until their 60s—about 10 years after men first develop symptoms. And hormones seem to play a protective role in women before menopause. But the common belief that premenopausal women are immune to heart problems is just plain wrong. Heart attacks strike 9,000 women younger than 45 each year.
LATimes
Cause for Alarm Over Chemicals 4-20-03
Toxic chemicals used as flame retardants are rapidly building up in the bodies of people and wildlife around the world, approaching levels in American women and their babies that could harm developing brains, new research shows.
The chemicals, PBDEs, or polybrominated diphenyl ethers, are used to reduce the spread of fire in an array of plastic and foam products in homes and offices, including upholstered furniture, building materials, televisions, computers and other electronic equipment.
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DESIGN STUDIO |
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The cocktail's renaissance as a sophisticated way to drink has coincided with a cultural moment -- a hunger for the comforts of casual behavior. Underscored by the economic moment, which is bad, meeting for drinks has produced a new version of the old night out -- not the prelude to the evening, but the main even.
Seattle Times
Groovy: Designers get a grip on the needs of aging baby boomers 4-20-03
Baby boomers — born between 1946 and 1964 — represent about 30 percent of the U.S. population. That boom presents product designers with the challenge of developing products that are easy for older consumers to use yet stylish enough to introduce into their home decor, experts say.
"The idea of universally designing products that can meet the older population is something I think will gain popularity as the number of older people increases," said Anne Long Morris, spokeswoman for the American Society on Aging and coordinator of the society's efforts to mesh new technologies with independent living strategies.
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STYLE.COM
Vogue and W online
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| CREATORS
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The photos are mysterious. No one seems to know who shot them, or why precisely, or even how many photographers were involved.
But there's nothing cryptic about their contents: Practically anyone with a penchant for Mod fashion, Swinging London or European post-New Wave cinema will recognize these images as coming from Michelangelo Antonioni's "Blow-Up" (1966), one of the most influential and groovily attired movies of the past 40 years.
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AMERICAN
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A scientist who claims to have worked in Iraq's chemical weapons program for more than a decade has told an American military team that Iraq destroyed chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before the war began, members of the team said.
They said the scientist led Americans to a supply of material that proved to be the building blocks of illegal weapons, which he claimed to have buried as evidence of Iraq's illicit weapons programs.
BBC News
Iraq's interim leader flies in 4-21-03
Jay Garner said on arrival at Baghdad airport that getting basic services back up and running was his priority for the city, whose residents have become increasingly restless about the lack of water and electricity.
But as these services are resumed, correspondents say attention will also turn to how long the US plans to keep its personnel in Iraq.
Newsweek
The Saddam Files 4-28-03
After 9-11, as talk of war against Iraq picked up in Washington, the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) became jittery. On Oct. 29, 2002, a memo from Directorate 14 (in charge of special operations and “wet work” like assassinations) reported that “one of our sources in the United States, with a high level of reliability, says the CIA and the so-called opposition have a joint plan to bring ‘quislings’ to Iraq from the north and south to gather information and await future missions. Our informant will be one of them.” The memo suggests, disturbingly, that Saddam had a mole somewhere inside U.S. intelligence.
Christian Science Monitor
Engineering a new Iraq 4-21-03
Saddam Hussein's regime has collapsed into a maze of toppled statues, isolated snipers, and burning buildings. Militarily, the war was quick and successful. But US troops and the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), run by retired Gen. Jay Garner, have begun what could be a much longer fight to define and support a democratic Iraq.
BBC News
Saddam 'alive and in Iraq' 4-21-03
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Saddam Hussein and at least one of his sons are being tracked as they move around Iraq, an opposition leader has told the BBC.
Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress says his supporters have not yet caught up with the ousted dictator but reports of his movements arrive within "12 to 24 hours".
LATimes
Shiites Get Their Shot at Power 4-21-03
A few short weeks ago, only the Sunni-dominated Baath Party would have dared to issue edicts to the Iraqi people — in the name of President Saddam Hussein.
But in the absence of a government since Hussein's ouster April 9, the voice of Sistani and the network of Shiite seminaries that he heads — the Hawza I-Ilima — is increasingly the authority that Iraqis heed.
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PBS
FRONTLINE
serious tv journalism
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NYTimes
States, Facing Budget Shortfalls, Cut the Major and the Mundane 4-21-03
The states are desperate, struggling with their worst financial crises since World War II. They have tapped rainy day funds, raided tobacco money that was supposed to have provided health care for children and taxed every possible vice.
Last year brought the storm warnings: some layoffs, the inconvenience of libraries closing early and roads without fresh asphalt. Now, as states scramble to find ways to cut nearly $100 billion this year and next from budgets that must by law be balanced, the cuts are much larger, and their effects profound.
NYTimes
The Day the Traffic Disappeared 4-20-03
. . . Livingstone has just begun the world's most radical experinent in reclaiming the city from the tyranny of the automobile, a power struggle that cities have been losoing in humiliating fashion for more than half a century. Since well before his election, he has been warning Londoners that far too many of them (about 250,000 a day) are trying to drive into far too small a place -- central London -- polluting the air, choking commerce, slowly strangling their own livelihood. To stop them, the mayor decided to draw a line, literally.
Newsweek
Dubya's Next Shot 4-28-03
George W. Bush thrives on regular order. In his meticulously managed Washington, nothing political is supposed to occur without the say-so of Karl Rove, officer in charge of presidential re-election. There was, accordingly, hell to pay when Rove was blindsided by a secret Senate deal—among Republicans, no less—to limit the size of Bush’s proposed tax cut. To Rove, the measure is a key to victory next year, demonstrating his boss’s concern for reviving the economy. Someone in the chain of command had to be blamed. That someone was Sen. Bill Frist, the majority leader. . .
Seattle Times
Creating Ecotopia 4-20-03
Vashon Island, described by activist Rita Schenck as "one-third artists, one-third environmentalists and one-third lawyers," is trying to declare its independence by becoming more sustainable and point the way to a "Puget Paradise."
Tacoma is taking its Superfund lemons and making lemonade.
And the city of Seattle is squinting into the rain and seeing pennies from heaven.
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Washington’s biggest concern, however, is Syrian support for terrorism. Few governments have more experience in this black art. (Since the State Department first issued a list of states supporting terrorism in 1979, Syria’s been on it.) But the Syrian regime’s style is not apocalyptic. It aims to bleed its rivals in the region, not to bring on a war of civilizations. In fact, when it comes to fighting Al Qaeda, Washington and Damascus are on the same team. Last year, thanks to information provided by Syrian intelligence, the United States was able to foil a planned attack on the U.S. Navy’s Administrative Support Unit (in effect, its headquarters) in Bahrain. According to U.S. officials, that Syrian tip saved a lot of American lives.
NYTimes
Bush More Hopeful on Syria 4-21-03
President Bush said today that he was encouraged by signs that Syruia was heeding his call not to harbot former Iraqi leaders, changing his tone after several weeks in which his administration had cast Syria as a rogue nation and a danger to the stability of the region.
"I'm confident the Syrian government has heard us," Mr. Bush said. "And I believe it when they say they want to cooperate with us."
The 65,000 U.S. troops that executed a meticulus war plan with such precision must now adjust to a mission they have little training for: conducting America's biggest and most expensive nation-building experiment since World War II. As Baghdad's de facto government, soldiers and marines are now patrolling the capital's streets in ever wider circles, and military engineers continue to restore electric power to parts of the ancient city. Yet the reality on the ground is less tidy than the PowerPoint presentations Pentagon officials once drew up when mapping a future of post-Saddam Iraq.
Time
Unfinished Business 4-28-03
The fact that both Saddam and his weapons were still missing made for some uncomfortable conversations in Washington—particularly when Saddam popped up again on TV. Virtually an entire air wing of Soviet-made MiG-25 fighters was found hidden in the desert, and more gold-plated AK-47s turned up in Saddam's palaces. But there was no sign yet of the buried nerve gas or a proven biowarfare lab. Polls in America are reflecting relief that the worst is over, more than concern at what remains to be done. But failure to achieve all the ends for which the war was launched may exact a higher cost over time.
Washington Post
Biotoxins Fall Into Private Hands 4-21-03
In three days of secret meetings last July, the man known throughout South Africa as "Doctor Death" astounded U.S. law enforcement officials with tales of how the former white-minority government carried out unique experiments with chemical and biological weapons.
Wouter Basson, the bearded ex-commander of Wouth Africa's notorious 7th Medical Battalion, spoke candidly of global shopping sprees for pathogens and equipment, of plans for epidemics to be sown in black communities and of cigarettes and letters that were laced with anthrax. He revealed the development of a novel anthrax strain unknown to the U.S. officials, a kind of "stealth" anthrax that Basson claimed could fool tests used to detect the disease.
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