Necessary News

All you need to know to sound brilliant

Government Censorship: What They Don’t Want Women To Know

• Encyclopedia Brown And The Case Of The Missing Search Term
• The good news: The government-funded website on reproductive health has restored the word “abortion” as an acceptable search term. [CBS News]
• The bad news: The government-funded website on reproductive health had blocked the word “abortion” as an acceptable search term.
• No one is quite sure what happened.
• The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health runs a website called “Popline.” The site is a publicly funded health database which provides information on family planning, patient care and health issues for women.
• Recently, doctors realized that if anyone searched for “abortion” on the site, the search was ignored.
• Censorship, anyone?
• Popline administrator Debra Dickson admitted as much, saying, “Yes, we did make a change to Popline. We recently made all abortion words stop words. As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now.”
• (“Stop Word”: A word that is automatically ignored during searches, usually “the” or “an.”)
• Best for whom, you ask? So did the Hopkins School of Health, which demanded the “stop word” be removed. Dean Dr. Michael Klag: “I could not disagree more strongly with this decision, and I have directed that the POPLINE administrators restore ‘abortion’ as a search term immediately. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge and not its restriction.”
• USAID officials, who fund the site, were “on a retreat” and unable to comment.

We love that librarians were the ones to bust this case wide open.

The Olympic Torch Protests Explained

• A canceled parade, a botched ceremony, an embarrassed committee. What do all these protesters have against the ‘08 Olympics in Beijing?

Here are the incidents so far:

• Paris: Yesterday, during the Olympic flame parade, protesters waving Tibetan flags forced French security to “snuff out the torch and rush it onto a bus at least five times” before finally announcing that “a vehicle [would] carry the torch for the entire last part of the route.” French President Sarkozy has said he is “open” to “the possibility of boycotting the Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing depending on how the situation evolves in Tibet.” [AP]
• London: The day before in London, police arrested 37 people during the torch parade in which “one protester tried to grab the torch; another tried to snuff out the flame with what appeared to be a fire extinguisher.” [WSJ]
• Athens: Activists disrupted the torch lighting ceremony in Athens by “unfurling a banner and calling for a boycott of the Beijing Summer Games.” [International Herald Tribune]
• Coming Soon: The torch is “expected to face demonstrations in San Francisco, New Delhi and possibly elsewhere on its 21-stop, six-continent tour before arriving in mainland China May 4.”

Why they’re protesting:

• Tibet: Activists and human rights advocates world wide are deeply troubled by China’s harsh crackdown on Tibetan protests against Chinese rule (at least 800 have been arrested...and that’s most certainly an underestimation). [Washington Post]
• Darfur: China continues to supply weapons and cash to the genocidal regime in Sudan responsible for the massacres in Darfur which have displaced 2.5 million people and killed at least 200,000. [Reuters]
• Human Rights: In 2001, the Chinese Olympic committee promised the ‘08 Beijing games would “help the development of human rights". They were wrong. The Olympics have triggered a massive crackdown on dissent, imprisonment of journalists, reckless use of the death penalty, and extreme censorship of the internet. Amnesty International says this brutality “is occurring not in spite ofthe Olympics, but actually because of the Olympics.”

The Chinese response:

• Chinese officials blame the protests on “a few Tibet separatists” and say they “believe that all the peace-loving people in the world will support the torch relay.”
• A word of caution: In the Washington Post, China correspondent John Pomfret writes, “China’s system feeds off this kind of adversity. The Communist regime has a peculiar genius for turning these types of threats into opportunities...The Chinese blogosphere has erupted in a chorus of patriotic cheering as the People’s Armed Police have flooded Tibetan zones.” [Washington Post]
• Pomfret explains the point of view of a young Chinese blogger: “For 150 years, China has been beaten down and oppressed by foreigners. Once again, the foreigners are at it. And what’s worse, they have picked this moment – China’s moment – to do it. Not only do they want to weaken China, the party’s propaganda organs crow, they want to make it do something even worse. They want to make it lose face. In front of 1.4 billion Chinese.”

Pomfret: “China’s big year could be a lot bigger than the Party figured it would. But prepare for unintended consequences.”

VA Spends Cash On Sharper Image, Casino Trips

• Moldy, mouse-ridden rooms at Walter Reed hospital. Not enough cash to treat soldiers returning from war with mental problems. Veterans showing up in homeless shelters. Ever wonder where the Veterans Affairs Agency *is* spending its money? [Washington Post] [Huffington Post] [NY Times] [American Progress]
• The answer is not going to make you happy.
• “Veterans Affairs employees last year racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in government credit-card bills at casino and luxury hotels, movie theaters, and high-end retailers such as Sharper Image and Franklin Covey, and government auditors are investigating.” [AP]
• $8,471: Amount spent on 13 purchases at Sharper Image, “a specialty store that sells high-tech electronics and gizmos such as robotic dogs.”
• $1,999.56: Amount spent on 19 purchases Franklin Covey, a fancypants store specialzing in leather planners for corporate execs.
• $26,198: Amount spent on six different trips to Vegas casinos.
• Tens of thousands of dollars: Amount spent at Wyndham hotels in San Diego, Orlando and Little Rock.
• Matt Smith, spokesman for the VA, on the Vegas vacations: The VA is trying to beef up their presence in SinCity, a place “an increasing number of veterans are calling home.”
• According to agency policy, VA credit cards “may be used at hotels to rent conference rooms or obtain audiovisual equipment or other items for meetings. They should not be used to reserve lodging.” Or for the craps tables.

The VA got in trouble back in 2004 for wasting up to $1.1 million on...stuff.

Good News, Bad News

Rats...on Speed?

Need an emotional Band Aid to feel better about those rats outwitting your mousetraps? Well, go ahead and feel superior because you were built to last longer. Scientists have discovered a new biological clock that ticks faster in rats than humans. Not only does the clock mean the pesky things live faster and die younger, but it also means “larger mammals in general will reach sexual maturity later than the half-pints.” Sounds just peachy, right? Here are the pros and cons: [LIVE SCIENCE]

Good News

That rat that keeps nibbling on your leftovers ain’t gonna outlast you.

Bad News

That same rat is probably more sexually mature than you are and making plenty of rodent babies.

Quote Of The Day

“He used to tell jokes and funny stories and now he doesn’t do that anymore...I could tell he was different right away, but I thought it would pass.”

—Heather Dunton, wife of Iraq vet Maj. Dunton in a must-read NY Times piece on the strained marriages of returned soldiers [NY Times]

Speed Round

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY

Today on The Hill, Gen. David Petraeus “is expected to call for halting troop reductions that began in December for about six months to assess the security situation.” We do the math so you don’t have to – that’s 140,000 troops left in Iraq, or 10,000 more than before last year’s surge. [Washington Times]

SUBPOENAED

Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) has been subpoenaed to testify in the trial against DC Madam this week. Vitter, whose phone number just so happened to pop up on the prostitution’s call list back in 2001, is fighting tooth-and-nail against having to take the stand. [ABC News]

THE “R” WORD AND YOU

With the economy tanking, are you worried about your job? CBS News reports that if you work for a hospital, school or on the assembly line of an airplane factory, you’re probably going to be okay. If you’re a construction worker, real estate agent or auto worker…not so much. [CBS News]

SCHULTZ STANDS UP

“I’m sorry, John, the label sticks. John McCain is a warmonger.” – Talk radio host Ed Schultz, not backing down from his controversial statement that John McCain is a warmonger. [USAT]

PROGRESS, JERSEY STYLE

New Jersey may become the third state to require companies to let employees take six weeks of paid leave to care for a baby or sick relative. [USAT]

SLOW READER?

Rep. Chris Shays (R., CT), who voted for the Iraq invasion, told a town hall meeting Sunday he *still* hasn’t read the pre-war National Intelligence Estimate, the doc that laid out the faulty intel the Bush White House used to justify the invasion. “No, I didn’t, thank you. I did not read it. .. I did not read it. But I could still read it, and I probably should. So, who’s on my staff?” [Think Progress]

PAY YOUR TAXES, BECOME SOMEONE ELSE

“A week before the tax filing deadline, Treasury Department watchdogs are saying that inadequate controls over the IRS computer system could make confidential taxpayer information more vulnerable to hacking and theft.” [MSNBC]

6

The number of Pulitzer prizes won by the Washington Post for “coverage that ranged from an exposé of poor care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center to an examination of Vice President Cheney’s behind-the-scenes clout to coverage of the massacre at Virginia Tech.” [Washington Post]

POLITICS BY OTHER MEANS

American troops and Iraqi civilians caught in an inter-Shi’ite struggle: “Hundreds of people fled fighting in Baghdad’s Shiite militia stronghold Monday as U.S. and Iraqi forces increased pressure on anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who faces an ultimatum to either disband his Mahdi Army or give up politics.” [USA Today]

ROSE COLORED GLASSES

White House spokesman Tony Fratto says the White House has “thrown out all of the rose-colored glasses in how we look at Iraq...” Color us skeptical. [Think Progress]

BAD MESSAGING

During a speech by Senator John McCain (R-AZ) saying the situation in Iraq has stabilized, the networks cut away to cover mortar fire and intense fighting in Baghdad’s Green Zone. [Think Progress]

JOBS JOBS JOBS

President Bush tries to force a free trade pact with Colombia through Congress. “Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) called the agreement ‘a continuation of failed policies’ that ‘have already cost countless American workers their jobs and have done profound harm to U.S. foreign policy.’” [Washington Post]

CONGESTION

The New York State Assembly has killed an innovative plan by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg to reduce traffic and pollution by charging drivers $8 to enter Manhattan during peak hours. [NY Times]

INFLATION

Inflation in Asia is driving up prices on all the stuff U.S. companies make there. [NY Times]