Twitter, Wordpress Execs In Iraq To Help Country Use New Media
4/21/09
CNN: Raanan Bar-Cohen represents Automattic, best known for the blog-publishing application WordPress.  Accompanying him on a four-day U.S. State Department-led trip on how Iraq can effectively use new media as it rebuilds, are Jack Dorsey, the founder of the micro-blogging site Twitter, and executives from Google, AT&T, YouTube and others.

Unions Get Family-Friendly Online Advice
4/21/09
Women’s eNews: As union members face growing financial stress, some expect contract negotiators to intensify the push for family-friendly benefits. A Web site launched earlier this month is there to help.

Women In The Field: What It’s Like To Work In Afghanistan
4/17/09
Globe and Mail: Since The Globe and Mail began staffing its Afghanistan bureau full time in early 2006, it has sent a number of women correspondents to the country. We asked them, in light of the current controversy over Afghan women’s rights, to reflect on their experiences.

Iran Official Orders ‘Fair’ Appeal Review For Reporter
4/21/09
NY Times: The chief of Iran’s judiciary said Monday that he had ordered a “careful, quick and fair” consideration of an appeal of the conviction of an eight-year prison sentence imposed on an Iranian-American journalist, one day after the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, urged the chief prosecutor to re-examine the case.

Pulitzer For L.A. Times’ Boxall And Cart *
4/20/09
LA Observed: Los Angeles Times Metro staff writers Bettina Boxall and Julie Cart won the Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting, announced today in New York.

Las Vegas Sun Reporter ‘In Shock’ To Win Pulitzer
4/20/09
San Jose Mercury News: Las Vegas Sun reporter Alexandra Berzon and her editors said Monday that they believe the Pulitzer Prize-winning stories they produced about construction safety brought an end to a spate of worker deaths at resort projects on the Las Vegas Strip.

America’s Newest Profession: Bloggers For Hire
4/21/09
Wall Street Journal: In America today, there are almost as many people making their living as bloggers as there are lawyers. Already more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions than Americans working as computer programmers, firefighters or even bartenders.

Strip Searches In Middle School? Top Court To Decide.
4/20/09
Christian Science Monitor: The Supreme Court must decide whether an Arizona school went too far in strip-searching an eighth-grade girl for drugs.

Broad Support For New York Gay Marriage Bill: Poll
4/20/09
Reuters: A majority of New Yorkers support a bill legalizing gay marriage, according to a poll released on Monday, but the measure still faces an uphill battle in the state legislature.

Sex Ratio Seen To Vary By Latitude
4/21/09
NY Times: More boys than girls are born all over the world, but a new study has found that the closer people live to the equator, the smaller the difference becomes. No one knows why.

RIGHTS: Racism Conference Caught In The Crossfire
4/20/09
IPS: The United Nations racism conference, trapped from its rocky start between the caution of Western countries and the inflamed speech of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, could still avoid failure, say independent experts.

Q&A: ‘To Be An Independent Activist Was One Of My Dreams’
4/20/09
IPS: As an activist in China, Yuan Feng is now the director of Combating Domestic Violence against Women and a leading figure of Gender and Development (GAD) group in China. She visited South Korea to join a newly established feminist network, Network for GloCal Activism and School of Feminism.

CIVIL SOCIETY: New Feminist Network For ‘Glocal’ Activism
4/20/09
IPS: Feminist activists have adopted ‘glocal’, a relatively new geolexical construct, to bridge activism from across Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Patrolling Sexuality
4/20/09
Inside Indonesia: Khalwat is a word adopted into Indonesian and Acehnese from Arabic. Its common usage in Aceh today refers to an unmarried and unrelated man and woman being alone together.

As Thunder Is Not Yet Rain, In Ethiopia, Legal Rights To Abortion Are Not Yet Access
4/21/09
RH Reality Check: Filmmaker Lisa Russell talks to RH Reality Check about “Not Yet Rain,” a new documentary examining the impact of liberalized abortion laws in Ethiopia.

Women In Somali City Must Cover Up Or Go To Jail
4/20/09
CNN: Women in Somalia’s third-largest city, Baidoa, have been ordered to wear Islamic dress starting this week or face jail time, according to a resident and Somali media reports.

Plight Of Afghan Women Prompts Fresh Debate Over War
4/18/09
Globe and Mail: Once that intractable problem over there, Afghanistan is now a seething issue on our streets, around dinner tables and in meeting rooms in Canada.

CHILE: Transparency Law Opens Access To Information
4/20/09
IPS: The Law on Transparency and Access to Public Information came into force in Chile on Monday. Although experts say there is room for improvement, and they foresee some difficulties in its implementation, they do not hesitate to describe it as a useful step forward.

Women’s Role In Disaster Risk Reduction
4/21/09
Daily News (Sri Lanka): Gender, like governance, is a key cross cutting issue that underlies all aspects of development. It is worthy of our serious and sustained attention. Gender equality does not merely mean equal rights for men and women and non-discrimination based on gender.

Global Economic Crisis Hits German Sex Industry
4/20/09
Reuters: It did not take long for the world financial crisis to affect the world’s oldest profession in Germany.

Uganda Embraces Low-Tech Test For Cervical Cancer
4/20/09
Women’s eNews: In Uganda, a fast, cheap diagnostic test based on vinegar is invigorating the battle against cervical cancer. Health activists are raising money to put it in a mobile clinic and health officials are eyeing a national rollout.

What Are Friends for? A Longer Life
4/21/09
NY Times: In the quest for better health, many people turn to doctors, self-help books or herbal supplements. But they overlook a powerful weapon that could help them fight illness and depression, speed recovery, slow aging and prolong life: their friends.