Across the Nation

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Three men, battle-seasoned Army officers but dressed in civilian clothes, watch as their tutor writes Arabic script across the board.

"You want to say ‘Turn left,”’ says Phillip Herlein. All three men reply: "Liff yasaar. Liff yasaar. Liff yasaar.”

The officers — on track to lead troops again, most likely in the Middle East — are part of a pilot program that is sending 21 Army officers to graduate school to learn about foreign cultures, business practices and languages, such as Arabic. The Army wants its leaders armed with solid skills to help them navigate road signs, engineering plans and simple conversations.

"We’re trying to develop officers to be strategic thinkers and creative managers ... who are culturally aware and have some language capability,” says Col. Mark Patterson, who’s in charge of policy for developing the Army officer corps.

Betty Friedan, philosopher of feminism, dies

Betty Friedan, whose manifesto "The Feminine Mystique” became a best seller in the 1960s and laid the groundwork for the modern feminist movement, died Saturday, her birthday. She was 85.

Friedan died at her home of congestive heart failure, according to a cousin, Emily Bazelon.

Friedan’s assertion in her 1963 best seller that having a husband and babies was not everything and that women should aspire to separate identities as individuals, was highly unusual, if not revolutionary.

The feminine mystique, she said, was a phony bill of goods society sold to women that left them unfulfilled, suffering from "the problem that has no name” and seeking a solution in tranquilizers and psychoanalysis.

"A woman has got to be able to say, and not feel guilty, ‘Who am I, and what do I want out of life?’ She mustn’t feel selfish and neurotic if she wants goals of her own, outside of husband and children,” Friedan said.

Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, publisher of Ms. magazine and a former president of the National Organization for Women, praised Friedan’s legacy.<