Women

It's Valentine's Day, and the movie studios have rolled out chick flicks like bouquets for every gal whose husband or boyfriend has ever disappointed them. Thank goodness. Or so that seems to be the message from female moviegoers who have been lining up for women-enticing movies in droves. Last year kicked off with the wildly successful "Sex and the City: The Movie" followed by "Mamma Mia!" in the summer and "Twilight" in the fall.

Women are far more likely than men to be kicked out of the military under the "don't ask, don't tell" policy against gays in uniform, according to government figures released Thursday. Critics of the policy said the disparity reflects deep-seated sexism in the armed forces. Women accounted for 15% of all active-duty and reserve members of the military but more than a third of the 619 people discharged last year because of their sexual orientation. The disparity was particularly striking in the Air Force, where women represented 20% of personnel but 61% of those expelled in 2008.

As American forces work to revive Iraq's tattered farming economy, they seem to have found an effective new weapon. Cows. At the suggestion of an Iraqi women's group, the Marine Corps recently bought 50 cows for 50 Iraqi widows in the farm belt around Fallouja, once the insurgent capital of war-torn Anbar province.

Lucie Kundra is something of a feminist rebel -- not because she wouldn't take her husband's name when they got married last year, but because she did. She adopted his surname exactly as it was, and in doing so defied centuries of tradition and the wishes of her own mother. That's because she refused to add the customary feminine suffix "ova" at the end, as the Czech language normally dictates; she answers to Lucie Kundra, not Lucie Kundrova.

Women made up 16% of all directors, producers, writers, cinematographers and editors working on the country's 250 highest-grossing movies last year, according to a report being released today by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University. That represented an uptick of one percentage point from 2007 but a decline of three points compared with 2001, the report said. The study, overseen by the center's executive director, Martha Lauzen, found that 22% of the films employed no women in any of those five job categories.

Gas just doesn't seem to stretch as far on these California roads. Which is why Nikki Caldwell found herself stranded on the side of one last Friday night. Thankfully, the UCLA women's basketball coach had just finished eating dinner with her staff. A couple of quick calls and her assistant coaches hustled off to find a gallon to go. As Caldwell waited, she was approached by two police officers who wanted to know what a young woman was doing alone in a dark car near Marina del Rey.

Liesel Flashenberg grew up poor in post-World War II Detroit, but she didn't know it. Her mother taught her how to dress like a million bucks from month-end sales and eat like a queen on chicken necks. Bargain hunting came as naturally as breathing. Even after she married a well-paid corporate lawyer, she shopped at thrift stores anyway. So it wasn't a stretch when Flashenberg, an incurable child of the '60s, decided to start teaching down-and-out women how to live richer, healthier lives.

Sometimes in the evening, long after her last class of the day, Patricia Medina has an uncommon urge. She wants to go back to school. "I want to come at night and just, like, make something," said Patricia, a sophomore at University High School in West Los Angeles. What could reduce an otherwise bright, engaging student to dreams of breaking and entering?

To get into character for a play she was doing in L.A., actress May Alhassen wrapped a black pashmina around her thick, dark hair and tied the loose ends into a bun at the back of her head. Then she stepped out onto the street. She stopped for coffee at Starbucks. She purchased a binder at Office Depot. Everywhere she went, Alhassen felt self-conscious and a little on edge. "I think the thing that surprised me the most was how angry and paranoid it made me: Are they looking at me because?

Welcome to Hollywood, Overture Films. The new movie studio knew that its first release -- "Mad Money," a comedy starring Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes as unlikely robbers -- would face one monster when it opens Jan. 18: the creature feature "Cloverfield" from Paramount Pictures, whose Internet buzz is growing. Now it may face a scarier one: 20th Century Fox said Thursday that it was moving its romantic comedy "27 Dresses" back by a week to the same opening date.