Closing Al-Jazeera in Cairo

Al-Jazeera’s Cairo bureau is shut down during Egypt protests, Jesse Ventura sues the TSA, and the productive use of video games in the U.S. military. These discoveries and more after the jump.

On a regular basis, Truthdig brings you the news items and odds and ends that found their way to Larry Gross, director of the USC Annenberg School for Communication. A specialist in media and culture, art and communication, visual communication and media portrayals of minorities, Gross helped found the field of gay and lesbian studies.

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Broadcasters Condemn Al-Jazeera’s Closure in Cairo The Association for International Broadcasting, the industry association for international TV, radio, mobile and online broadcasting, strongly condemns the closure of the Cairo bureau of Al Jazeera Network and the withdrawal of accreditation to Al Jazeera correspondents in Egypt.

Jesse Ventura sues TSA, says body scans and pat-down searches violate rights Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura sued the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration on Monday, alleging full-body scans and pat-downs at airport checkpoints violate his right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.

What’s the Best Thing for a Soldier’s Mental Health? In an essay on the potential benefits of playing games, Jane McGonigal writes that studies have shown video games can be tremendously beneficial to soldiers during wartime.

Internet Suppression Bill Moves Ahead A controversial bill handing President Obama power over privately owned computer systems during a “national cyberemergency,” and prohibiting any review by the court system, will return this year.

Banksy identity auction removed from EBay — was it a hoax? An auction on EBay that offered to reveal the identity of the elusive British street artist known as Banksy to the highest bidder has been removed from the website just one day before it was scheduled to close.

Boehner: Obama Doesn’t Believe in American Exceptionalism President Obama may not have used the words American exceptionalism during his State of the Union address Tuesday night, but he certainly seemed to be promoting the idea. But House Speaker John Boehner wanted more – he wanted Obama to say it.

Where have all the unions gone? In 2010, the union membership rate—the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of a union—was 11.9 percent, down from 12.3 percent a year earlier; the number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions declined by 612,000 to 14.7 million.