Study: TV’s female characters are sexual targets

Teenage female characters are sexual fodder for broadcast network TV series, especially comedies, according to a conservative US advocacy group’s new study. An examination of 238 sitcoms and dramas airing in the United States during four weeks in 2011 and 2012 found a third of the episodes included content that “rose to the level of sexual exploitation” of females, according to the Parents Television Council report

Share

Education Survey: China Scores Top Marks; U.S., France Lag

The rise of China as an economic and political juggernaut has become a familiar refrain, but now there’s another area in which the Chinese are suddenly emerging as a world power: education. In the latest Program for International Student Assessment comparative survey of the academic performance of 15-year-olds around the world — an authoritative study released every three years — Chinese teenagers from Shanghai far outscored their international peers in all three subject matters that were tested last year: reading, math and science.

Share

Afghanistan and NATO: Why Europe May Not Be Up to the Fight

Barack Obama arrived in Strasbourg on Friday for this weekend’s NATO summit enthusing about the military organization, which he described at a joint press conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy as “the most successful alliance in modern history.” That it may have been. But Obama’s praise contrasts starkly with the scathing assessment of the state of NATO, now 60 years old, by European military analysts, who say that the gap in military capability between the United States and Europe has grown so big that in some places battlefield communication between NATO forces and their US allies has become difficult

Share

Is recovery for real? This week should provide key clues

To: Interested parties From: John King, CNN chief national correspondent Re: The Monday Memo (CNN) — From start to finish, this week offers tests of whether economic recovery is taking root and also should answer whether months of Senate negotiations on health lead to a bill with any Republican support. First, the economy.

Share