Which Do You Want First?

Let's start with the bad news (via Feminist.org):

A new report by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) is shedding light on the extent of violence against women in Afghanistan. ... [A] resurgence of the Taliban in recent months has brought an increase in militia bombings, burnings of girls' schools, and the killing of teachers. Under the Taliban regime, education for Afghan women and girls was banned. Attacks on girls' schools began immediately following the reopening of the schools by the new Afghan government in 2002, but the current situation has reached crisis proportions, undermining the rights that Afghan women and girls were just beginning to enjoy.

... and wind up with some good news (via Democracy Now!):

Two weeks ago, two producers working for Fox News in Amman, Jordan resigned in protest of the network's coverage. In their resignation letter, Serene Sabbagh and Jomana Karadsheh wrote, "We can no longer work with a news organization that claims to be fair and balanced when you are so far from that." They went on to write, "Not only are you an instrument of the Bush White House and Israeli propaganda, you are war mongers with no sense of decency, nor professionalism." ...

SERENE SABBAGH: [F]rom the onset of the war in Lebanon, I was devastated at the way that Fox was handling the coverage from Lebanon in the U.S., and I felt there was bias, the slant, the racist remarks, the use of the word "we" meaning Israel, and it was just unbearable up until basically the massacre at Qana. And as a mother of three, watching the images, the raw images of children being pulled out of the rubble, and then I switched to Fox News to hear some of their anchors claiming that these little kids that were killed, these innocent victims that were killed, were human shields used by Hezbollah. And one of the anchors went as far as saying they were planted there by Hezbollah to win support in this war. And it was unbelievable. For me, that was the breaking point, and this is when I decided, me and my colleague Jomana, to hand in our resignation.