A review of the pilot episode of "Girls", along with a discussion of the uproar surrounding the show.

NOTE: When I interned with the Wilson Center, I was not aware of how USAID worked, and was taking the best opportunity I could to work in the environmental field right out of college. As a dedicated anti-imperialist, while I am appreciative of the time spent with my wonderful coworkers, who I learned a lot from, I ask anyone visiting this work to treat it with many grains of salt-- USAID funding has a specific agenda that frequently does not align with my own personal views on environmentalism, economic justice, and America's imperialist intervention in the world. I know youthful ignorance and naivete is no excuse for my involvement, but it is my explanation. I also have nothing but appreciation for my former co-workers there, who were only good to me, and I think were there out of a sincere mission, even if I disagree now as to whether good work can be done with USAID funding. -------- HIV-positive persons in all segments of society face intense marginalization, but the effect is immensely compounded for women and expecting mothers. In Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, where at least 57,000 women are living with HIV, the stigmatization is so great that many are denied basic reproductive rights, says Harvard University’s Tamil Kendall in this week’s podcast, from the Maternal Health Initiative. Following community-based surveys on reproductive rights violations in these countries, Kendall noticed a clear trend of withheld care and abuse at the hands of health care workers for HIV-positive women, with some survey participants recounting harrowing ordeals. “There’s fear about the reactions women get [from health care providers],” Kendall said, and the stories of those surveyed show that it is, “a reasonable fear.” Despite medicine and techniques that can make mother-to-child transmission extremely unlikely, HIV-positive women were not informed, denied access to contraceptives, and told they should not become pregnant. Some were even operated on unwittingly. “Some women don’t even know they’ve been sterilized until they try to get pregnant and then someone looks in their medical records,” Kendall said. She recounted one case of a woman being made to make her mark on a consent form while still recovering from anesthesia after a caesarian section. Misinformation on the part of health care providers is part of the problem. “Many times, providers are operating under false assumptions about the risk of transmission, which is added to already existing discrimination and stigma and produces these kinds of problems,” Kendall said. “Only 45 percent of women who had an HIV negative partner had received information about how to conceive a child while reducing risks to that partner.” The result is a wholly inadequate health care experience: “Under half of the women [surveyed] considered that they had received comprehensive reproductive health services, and in fact 41 percent said that they have been discriminated against by health care workers specifically when seeking reproductive services.” With such a high level of stigmatization and discrimination, change may be a slow process, but governments need to take the first step, she said. “In order to protect reproductive rights as human rights…[states] need to implement rights-based training for HIV providers around reproductive health, and to disseminate cutting-edge knowledge about treatment as prevention and about the low vertical rates of HIV transmission and sexual transmission.“ Tamil Kendall spoke at the Wilson Center on January 13. Download her slides to follow along. Note: Some statistics have been updated since the initial presentation. Friday podcasts are also available for download on iTunes. Sources: UNAIDS, World Health Organization.

An on-site account from one of LCD Soundsystem's final concerts. Cover Story, found on pages 19-21

"Rising sea levels threaten coastal cities and island nations with natural disasters, rising temperatures spread tropical disease to new regions, and increased migration of populations away from coastal and drought-prone regions results in economic and agricultural displacement – a major issue on a continent struggling with refugees, environmental- and otherwise. High vulnerability regions for these varied threats are often mutually inclusive (see above). The PAI study identified 15 “hotspot” countries that have “high projected population growth, high projected declines in agricultural production, and low resilience to climate change.” These nations also face widespread conditions of water stress or water scarcity (defined, respectively, as below 1,700 cubic meters and 1,000 cubic meters of water per person annually). De Souza singled out Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Malawi, and Somalia as particularly vulnerable."

Strangers high-fived. People held cut-out pictures of Obama and signs reading "four more years." One man walked around shirtless with an Obama "O'' on his chest. NOTE: This newswire brief was dictated from on-site, over the phone.

Short Story; Featured story for the April issue.

For those of you out there who have always dreamed of playing as the worm from Tremors , and have not owned an iOS device at any point in the 2010s, then I am pleased to announce that your long exodus has reached its happy conclusion. Super Mega Worm has arrived on Android devices, and lo, its wrath has descended upon our smartphones like the hellfire of a thousand angry ’80s haircuts.

Yesterday, the leaders of countries, corporations and environmental organizations gathered in New York for the UN Climate Summit. Planet Experts was there. In this exclusive video, we take you from the People’s Climate March – a historic gathering of 400,000 activists in the streets of New York – into the UN itself. Filmed and Edited within 24 hours, singlehandedly.