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| WOMEN TODAY |
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 USA Today
Most heart atatcks caused by unhealthy lifestyle
Two sweeping studies released today appear to explode the long-held myth that half of heart attacks result from bad genes or bad luck.
The studies, focusing on different populations totaling about half a million peoiple, indicate that about 90% of people with severe heart disease have one or more of four classic risk factors: smoking, diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure.
BBC News
Alzheimer's surge predicted
The number of people with dementia is set to rise
An "epidemic of Alzheimer's" over the next few decades could be far worse than previously thought, experts suggest.
The number of people with Alzheimer's could treble by 2050, say US researchers, as the population surges and existing patients live longer.
The US team, from Rush Institute on Healthy Aging, claimed that the huge rise could effectively bankrupt the country's medicare system, and called for more funding for research into treatments.
ABCNews
Are Scans a Scam?
Since it was first offered a decade ago, whole-body scanning offered directly to consumers by for-profit imaging centers has become increasingly popular. That's especially true in upper income areas filled with deep-pocketed, health-conscious consumers who have long heard that prevention is the best medicine.
While periodic body imaging may sound like an unequivocally good thing to do for one's health — with the hopes of detecting a disease early enough to be cured — a recent study in the medical journal Radiology suggests there is a need for guidelines to help clarify the risks and benefits of such scans for healthy individuals.
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WOMEN
INTERNATIONAL |
Metropolis
Egyptian Sprawl
"I started wearing it six months ago; I just felt like I wanted to," Nancy El-Orindy says of the traditional hijab scarf that she, like many women in Cairo, wears over her hair. "We are supposed to be covered so we don't attract too much attention from guys." The 19-year-old student slouches in a wicker chair in the central courtyard of the American University in Cairo (AUC), an unlikely school in the heart of the capital city of Egypt. Around her classmates sit at café-style tables and chairs, and young men play basketball behind a wire fence. As the students lounge, a half dozen or so cats, ubiquitous in Cairo, slink about the walkways, stairs, and tables.
Orindy's story illustrates the Waring-blender whirl of money, culture, religion, and history in the region. On the one hand, she wears the hijab to show her new commitment to her Islamic roots. On the other hand, she plays college soccer--a passion she picked up in her native Canada, where she was born to Egyptian parents. Orindy speaks English better than Arabic. And her professional goal? "I want to go to fashion school, to be a dress designer," she says with an embarrassed smile. "I like Gucci and Prada."
The biggest threat to Lillian's virginity may not be her hormones or those of the boys in her high school class. It may be her empty pockets and her ambition that prompt her to have sex.
Lillian, a 16-year-old orphan, would be any parent's dream child. She studies hard and picks her friends carefully. She avoids bad influences, a challenge in this rugged slum on the outskirts of Kampala, the capital, and she is so committed to avoiding AIDS that she has become a leader in her school's Straight Talk club, which promotes abstinence.
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| THINKING
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ABC News
In a Crowded Airport, Virtually Alone
By Joe Honig
The woman at the airport, seated near the gate, was tall and tan and well grommed. She was 40ish. I am 50ish.
She wore no wedding band. Me? I divorced years ago.
As an anonymous traveler in search of company, I thought there might be an opening. For a meeting. Conversation to break up a tedious afternoon. Maybe something more. You never know.
But, like a score of others, she was on the phone. A tiny black clamshell placed close against her right ear, sending me the message: Do not approach. Do not engage. To do otherwise would be untoward. Unwanted. A nice smile will probably get you nowhere.
By Susan Black Allen
Maybe if our first baby had been easy, we might seriously be considering a sibling right now. Or perhaps if we were still in our 20s, we'd have the energy, naivete, and optimism of youth, and the thought of taking on another one wouldn't seem so daunting. Also, in another era, Grandma might live just down the street rather than an hour and a half away.
Although the number of one-child families is on the rise, the pressure to have at least two kids is no less evident. My friend Donna calls it our society's insistence for couples to produce "an heir and a spare." Donna knows a lot about the pressure to have kids. She has decided not to have them and is often hounded by relatives and at baby showers.
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| LIFESTYLE |
NYTimes
3 Women and 3 Paths, 10 Years Later
A decade ago, women accounted for 15 percent of computer professionals. That number has risen only slightly, to 20 percent, according to the Institute for Women and Technology, a nonprofit group based in Palo Alto, Calif. And women in the computer industry are at a disadvantage in pay, earning an average of $55,000 to their male colleagues' $65,000, according to the National Science Foundation.
In academia, the picture is little different. Of the 61 M.I.T. students receiving Ph.D.'s in computer science and electrical engineering in 1993, 10 were women. In 2003, 63 Ph.D.'s were awarded; 10 went to women.
Despite spending $2.4 billion over nine years, many states still have not gotten their child-welfare tracking systems online, a government watchdog agency recently concluded in a report to Congress.
"Most states continue to face challenges providing complete, accurate and consistent data" about child abuse and neglect, foster care and adoption, the General Accounting Office said in a report released last week.
Washington Post
Ladies of the Club
The Senate now has 14 women members, 13 of them elected. (The 14th, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, was appointed by her father, Gov. Frank Murkowski, in a bracing display of the same sort of dynastic favoritism that has benefited men since the Bronze Age.) These female senators run the gamut from West Coast liberals to Southern conservatives, from early forties to three-score-and-10, from treacly to edgy. Some look like they've just come from the hairdresser and some look like . . . they haven't. Some voted to authorize the war in Iraq, some didn't.
In other words, they are no different from the men.
A new women's group raising money for the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee wants to take an unusual step to boost its fund raising: asking donors to give to a "savings account" for the nominee-to-be months before that person is picked.
The Women Engaged in Leadership, Education and Action in Democracy (WE LEAD) political action committee's plan is a new twist on a fund-raising technique known as bundling.
Christian Science Monitor
Popcorn & pacifiers
Loews Cineplex and Urbanbaby.com have been rolling out ReelMoms (dads are welcome, too) over the summer in 15 cities, including Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Houston, and Washington. Several smaller cinemas also have launched such screenings, including "Rattle at the Brattle" Theater in Cambridge, Mass.
Their aim is to give parents a few hours of air-conditioned pop culture each week, not to mention the chance to connect with other new moms. In return, cinemas hope film fans will stay in the habit of moviegoing after babies are born, say marketing experts, and that parents will bring their children back to see kids' fare.
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DESIGN STUDIO |
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For once, fall fashion isn't so scatterbrained. There may be lots of choices and lots of themes, from bookish dandyism to 1960s futurism, but the unifying element is a new sense of proportion.
"I've not seen proportion change so dramatically in so many different areas as I have this season," Robert Burke, the fashion director of Bergdorf Goodman said. "Essentially, the whole proportion went up -- armholes and the waist went up, hemlines are shorter. As a result, other things have to shift to balance out the whole look."
LATimes
L.A. Woman
. . . Our sister to the East, New York, has a million hegemonic expressions for it—one "works" a fashion mood, one "serves [up]" a designer outfit, one "feels" a costumey dress. And whatever "look" is in is guaranteed to be identified, dissected and priced within 30 seconds of its presentation.
L.A. women don't go for that. Sure, they covet, but L.A. style-setters don't get as fixated about "must haves" as women in other cities. "Fashion here is digested in a totally different way," says stylist and costume designer Arianne Phillips, who dresses Madonna, contributes to Italian Vogue, Pop and Harper's Bazaar and costumed actors in films including "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," "Identity" and "Girl, Interrupted." Phillips attributes part of this digestive process to good old California culture: the beach, the mountains, the desert, the climate, the sunshine.
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STYLE.COM
Vogue and W online
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To call Bill Stern's Hancock Park apartment a showcase of California pottery would be to radically understate the case: It is a shrine.
Stern is a man possessed. In corners and on shelves, in stacks under and on top of tables, in boxes by the bed, in alcoves and nooks, on counter tops and mantels and finally spilling out on the balcony is every imaginable example of the solid-color commercial pottery that revolutionized American tableware in the 1930s and sparked a nationwide design trend.
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AMERICAN
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Washington Post
Wny Spanish is the favored new language of politics
Feeling comfortable at Hispanic functions - and confident with a smattering of phrases - has spurred congressional Republicans' most ambitious effort to date at mastering the Spanish tongue. Part of that attempt is Spanish on the Hill, a 10-week course held Wednesday mornings while Congress is in session. This summer saw its largest GOP contingency yet.
NYTimes
Florida Board Backs Retreat on Class Size
Florida's top education officials are seeking a partial repeal of a disputed plan to lower class size, a move that could cost state taxpayers billions of dollars.
The State Board of Education voted unanimously today to advocate sharply scaling back the plan, which voters approved as a constitutional amendment last fall. All seven board members are appointees of Gov. Jeb Bush, who fought the amendment on grounds that it was too expensive and not educationally sound.
Business Week
The Digital Divide That Wasn't
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Welcome to the digital divide, circa 2003. Roughly seven years ago, when the term was coined, it described a presumed problem of uncertain dimensions. Policymakers speculated that despite its promise, the Web -- which was then dominated by wealthy, white males -- might exacerbate societal divisions of race, income, gender, and education.
There's still a gap, of course, as Israel can testify. But research shows that it's narrowing -- and that no problem serious enough to earn the scary label digital divide really exists, even as the Web has found its way to the furthest reaches of the globe. There are now slightly more women than men using the Internet. And the percentage of African Americans and Hispanics who are going online should soon match their representation in the broader population, according to Nielson/Net Ratings.
ABCNews
Study: Stress Leads Kids to Drug Abuse
Boredom and a wad of cash can lead young Americans to substance abuse, according to a Columbia University survey released Tuesday.
The study also found that students at smaller schools and those attending religious schools are less likely to abuse narcotics and alcohol.
Young people ages 12 to 17 who are frequently bored are 50 percent likelier than those not often bored to smoke, drink, get drunk and use illegal drugs, said the study by the university's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse.
Christian Science Monitor
Why more students are studying abroad
As college students prepare for a fresh academic year, and the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks approaches, one thing some pundits had predicted is not happening: Young people are not responding to the attacks - or to America's faltering image abroad - by turning their back to the world.
Instead, young adults are traveling, studying, and volunteering overseas in growing numbers. This steadily rising stream among the T-shirt set reflects national surveys showing that Americans in general shun an isolationist and "go it alone" approach to the world.
Christian Science Monitor
Late bloomers choose art school for self-enrichment
Almost half of the students at the Art Students League in New York City are 50 years of age or older. While only 2 percent of the students at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston are older than 50, 17 percent of students entering the nearby School of the Museum of Fine Arts in are in that age range.
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PBS
FRONTLINE
serious tv journalism
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More than 160 priests in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee have signed a letter arguing that married men should be allowed to enter the priesthood.
The letter marks the first time since the mid-1970s that a group of priests has spoken out in favor of loosening the rules on celibacy, said Dean Hoge, a sociologist at Catholic University of America.
Christian Science Monitor
Guiding Light
"Joan of Arcadia" is just one of a half-dozen or so new network series whose characters deal with the spiritualistic in some form. Some are dead, some talk to the dead, and some get good ideas - divine and possibly otherwise from - umm, plastic lions and brass monkeys.
Of course, angels and destiny are not a new topic for writers. "Highway to Heaven" and the just-canceled nine-year hit, "Touched by an Angel," had faithful audiences. But this season is more heaven-bent than usual, if also a bit darker and more ambiguous about just how good otherworldly influences always are. And given TV's increasing hunger for young audiences, Della Reese and Michael Landon have given way to pretty under-25-year-olds.
USNews
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CNN
U.S. approves Viagra rival from Glaxo, Bayer
The announcement, from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, means that Levitra, an orange pill, will give men an alternative to Pfizer Inc.'s famous diamond-shaped blue pill Viagra, the drug that transformed impotence treatment after its 1998 debut as the first oral therapy for the condition.
Viagra gained instant success as the first oral therapy for impotence, but Levitra's makers are aiming to lure many of the millions of men who have not sought treatment. An estimated 30 million U.S. men experience some level of erectile dysfunction.
NYTimes
Trading Barbie for Drugs, Sex and Halter Tops
The movie flutters above the fine line between drama and exploitation, as did a 2000 film by David D. Williams with a similar theme and also called "Thirteen." A preening vulnerability from teenage actresses is often visible in these films about young girls adrift and heartbreakingly alone even when they travel in a group. In Lawrence Ah Mon's gripping 2000 Hong Kong drama "Spacked Out," the girls still wear Hello Kitty backpacks as they swing their hips with a bravura picked up from music videos and commercials. This demeanor is often called growing up too fast, but it's obvious these girls haven't grown up at all; it's why they cling so tenaciously to tantrums.
Yet amazingly, these movies about teenage girls, confused and rebellious with no focus, give young actresses opportunities to unleash their talents. And in the case of "Thirteen," Evan Rachel Wood's claims our attention.
Brad Bushman, a professor of psychology and communications studies, says that studies he has conducted show that viewers who watch relatively inoffensive shows, like home improvement show "Trading Spaces" or "America's Funniest Animals," remember about 20 percent more advertisers they saw on the shows than they do on shows like "The Man Show," "Cops," or "NYPD Blue," which carry an "S" and/or "V" warnings for sexual or violent content.
On the Continent, going au naturel has long been au courant -- Danish women sunbathe topless during lunch hour, and Germans swim naked in the middle of Berlin. But Britain has been slower to bare itself.
Which is where Mr. Gough, gangly, determiined and sunbaked, steps in. He has been walking since June 16 and hopes to finish by Aug.23. "I want to raise awareness about the paranoia we have about our bodies," he explained. "Man plus naked equals pedophile or pervert or both. I hope I might widen those conclusions."
MSNBC
'Underwood joins 'Sex and the City'
Miranda’s new squeeze in “Sex and the City” is handsome, successful and charming. He’s also black — notable for a show that has been almost uniformly white in its casting. The series about four single New Yorkers is finally allowing the city’s ethnic diversity a central role.
LATimes
It hasn't gone away'
Federal health officials reported last month that the number of new AIDS cases was up for the first time in a decade. Along with a continued rise in new cases of HIV infection, the numbers are raising concerns that AIDS may be making a resurgence after years of progress had been made in battling it. Health experts are concerned that the statistics reflect a growing sense of public complacency about the disease, especially among homosexual and bisexual men. New HIV infection rates rose an alarming 7.1% among that group last year.
While fall fashion's most commercial news is that everything ladylike is all the rage, there are other sides to the season's story, other voices, other boons. For instance, latex and rubber wear are begging for attention, a sort of rebel yell. Fromm subtle to "genius" suggestions in the collections of Julien Macdonald, Helmut Lang and Nicolas Ghesquiere for Balenciaga to more overt displays in skirts, tops and thongs by John Galliano for Christian Dior, it is latex here, latex there, S&M lilte everywhere.
Do fashion people have their fingers on the pulse, or are they, bless their pointed little heads, just being silly -- again?
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BUSINESS
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Reuters
US 2003 budget gap creeps above $300 billion mark
With the end of the fiscal year nearing, the U.S. government's budget gap crept into record territory in July and surpassed $300 billion, the Treasury Department said on Tuesday.
The year-to-date deficit, with August and September still to go in the budget year, rose to $323.98 billion, Treasury said in its monthly budget statement. July's deficit, at $54.24 billion, was close to expectations and bigger than in July 2002, when it was $29.16 billion.
Bloomberg News
U.S. July Housing Starts Rise 1.5% to 1.872 Mln Rate
``Housing starts are going to remain strong,'' said Stuart Miller, chief executive officer of Lennar Corp., in a television interview with Bloomberg News. ``Movements in interest rates are relatively small, with rates at historical lows.''
Residential construction, which accounts for 5 percent of the value of goods and services produced in the U.S., has been supporting the economy's expansion, fueled by the lowest mortgage rates on record. Housing-related spending on such items as furniture and appliances also contributes to economic growth, economists said.
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BLOOMBERG
financial
news to the world
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| CONSUMERS |
CNN
Poll: Confidence on hold
The ABC News/Money magazine Consumer Comfort Index, composed of ratings for current economic conditions, stands at -16 on its scale of positive 100 to negative 100. It was virtually the same, -17, for the previous three weeks.
Twenty-nine percent of Americans rate the nation's economy as excellent or good, up from 27 percent the prior week. The highest level of confidence in this category was set at 80 percent in January 2000.
Christian Science Monitor
School shopping season opens
Nationally, this year's hot school-supply items are high-tech backpacks, says Karen Burk, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman in Bentonville, Ark. Not ones that just carry books around - that's too old fashioned.
Bestsellers include "cool pack" backpacks with insulated pockets for drinks or the "live wire" that comes with built-in earphones and volume control so kids can listen to a stereo. "Our young customers are looking for something to show their individuality," Ms. Burk says.
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| WORKPLACE |
The weeks immediately following the Labor Day holiday are typically among the worst of the year for layoffs, said John Challenger, CEO of Chicago outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which publishes monthly reports of layoff announcements.
"You are 25 percent more likely to lose a job after Labor Day [Sept. 1] than in the preceding eight months," Challenger said. "The reasons: employers are finalizing budgets and business plans for 2004, and payroll levels are heavily impacted by both."
CBSMarketWatch
Mothers-to-be fight back
While pregnancy-discrimination claims comprise a small portion of all workplace claims filed with the EEOC, they're on the rise, increasing 26 percent between fiscal years 1996 to 2002, to 4,714 claims filed last year from 3,743 in 1996, according to the EEOC.
The reason behind the jump in claims is unclear, but most experts say there's greater awareness among workers about their rights, and more men invested in the issue now, leading to a greater likelihood that claims are filed.
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| GLOBALIZATION |
Newsweek
A Crackup for World Trade?
The global trading system is in trouble—mainly because it became overdependent on big U.S. trade deficits. From 1996 to 2002, the American trade deficit jumped from $191 billion to $485 billion. We Americans are buying vast amounts of foreign-made pots and pans, cars, CD and DVD players, bicycles, clocks, umbrellas, socks and shoes. In 1996, the United States imported $1.31 of goods for every $1 it exported; now, the import figure is approaching $2 (it’s $1.79 so far in 2003).
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USA Today
Brakes on the scale
Brownell, author of a new book, Food Fight: The Inside Story of the Food Industry, America's Obesity Crisis, and What We Can Do About It. . . written with Katherine Battle Horgen, charges that "kids are targeted in relentless ways by food companies, and they aren't mature enough to make choices that affect their health.
"We've basically given the food industry a free pass at our children, and they need protection from a food and activity environment that is out of control," says Brownell, father of three and director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders on the campus here.
Texas was one of the first targets for Wal-Mart's 200,000-square-foot "supercenters," which sell groceries alongside general merchandise. Today, the company has more stores of all kinds in the state — 163 supercenters, 68 Sam's Club warehouse stores and 52 Neighborhood Markets — than in any other. Around company headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., an hour's plane ride from Dallas, when anybody asks, "Why are there so many Wal-Marts in Texas?" the answer they get is: "Because it's big."
Since no other retailer of any stripe can come close to being as big as Wal-Mart, grocers here are trying to distinguish themselves by appealing to a class audience rather than a mass audience. Some try to loft their produce to a new level, and others hawk their natural-food sections. But all are betting that while Wal-Mart may win on price, they can win on something else.
Ad Age
Assessing Donald Trump as Reality Show and Celebrity Brand
But what exactly is the image attached to brand Trump? Millward Brown, a WPP Group marketing research company, created a study exclusively for Advertising Age that evaluates Trump's brand potency and the potential for success of The Apprentice. Millward Brown surveyed more than 2,000 adults. The study compared Mr. Trump to five other branded business entrepreneurs: Oprah Winfrey, Ted Turner, Martha Stewart and Sean "P. Diddy" Combs.
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