It's the cold calculus of the high-stakes world of U.S. network television news -- if your show's ratings go down, your prospects go down with them. And with ABC nipping at NBC's heels, the executive producer of NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams may pay the price.

From the BBC:

The ban reflects a growing unease about using the "N-word"

The city council of New York has voted to ban the use of the word "nigger".

The resolution to ban the so-called "N-word" is largely symbolic as it carries no weight in law and those who use the word would face no punishment.

But it reflects a growing unease that the racial slur is now part of everyday conversation and that the taboo against its usage has been swept away.

The word is in common usage among sections of the younger generation in the United States. ... for America's so-called hip-hop generation using the word among themselves is about self-empowerment.

Its usage is habitual and seems culturally fixed and to stop it is likely to take a change in their attitudes rather than an edict from elected officials.

Addendum

The Beeb followed up on the news story with a feature.

From the BBC:

Thirty-four monks officiated at Osaka's Kyocera Dome

The late inventor of instant noodles was symbolically blasted off into space at a funeral ceremony attended by thousands in Osaka, western Japan.

The event was a tribute to Momofuku Ando's creation of Space Ram, a noodle soup that works at zero gravity.

Mr Ando, who died in January aged 96, created the instant noodle in 1958 and worked hard on the vacuum pack that was taken into space in 2005.

His Nissin Food Products has annual sales of 300bn yen ($2.5bn).

Tuesday's ceremony attracted 6,500 people to Osaka's Kyocera Dome baseball stadium. Thirty-four monks officiated and stars adorned the walls.

A previous post on Mr. Ando's passing.

The CIA has been operating a series of black prisons around the world to better interrogate the world's worst terrorists while safely hidden from prying eyes.

One prisoner has talked to the Washington Post.

From the NYT:

When a psychology professor at DePauw University (in Greencastle, Ind.) surveyed students, they described one sorority as a group of “daddy’s little princesses” and another as “offbeat hippies.” The sisters of Delta Zeta were seen as “socially awkward.”

Worried that a negative stereotype of the sorority was contributing to a decline in membership that had left its Greek-columned house here half empty, Delta Zeta’s national officers interviewed 35 DePauw members in November, quizzing them about their dedication to recruitment. They judged 23 of the women insufficiently committed and later told them to vacate the sorority house.

The 23 members included every woman who was overweight. They also included the only black, Korean and Vietnamese members. The dozen students allowed to stay were slender and popular with fraternity men -- conventionally pretty women the sorority hoped could attract new recruits. Six of the 12 were so infuriated they quit.

“Virtually everyone who didn’t fit a certain sorority member archetype was told to leave,” said Kate Holloway, a senior who withdrew from the chapter during its reorganization.

Here's hoping the six conventionally pretty white women who stayed will meet like-minded, conventionally handsome, white fraternity men, and that they go on to create the foundations of a master race together -- maybe even come up with a final solution for the socially awkward.

Addendum

In a CNN interview, some of the insufficiently committed women said they were told the nickname of their sorority was "the doghouse."

How much are we to make of the fact that a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself outside the Bagram air base in Afghanistan while U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was safe inside?

This NYT analysis suggests it may symbolize American worries about a Taliban and al Qaeda resurgence in Afghanistan.

The Kajaki dam, once it gets fully up to speed, could provide electricity for another two million Afghans. Don't think the Taliban don't know that.