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The Boston Marathon bombings story has almost disappeared. A House committee held hearings into any homeland security problems there might have been between local police and federal investigators. NBC's Pete Williams and ABC's Pierre Thomas duly filed perfunctory reports. CBS did not mention the hearings, even in passing.
For CBS, the troubling homeland security question was posed by the catastrophic fertilizer depot explosion near Waco, which happened in the same week as the less deadly explosions in Boston. Manuel Bojorquez picked up on a GAO report about the failure to monitor such storage facilities.
Elizabeth Palmer must have thought that she had a heavy lift to make the parliamentary elections in Pakistan eyecatching to CBS' American audience -- until she found a world champion sports star and jetsetting playboy, who fell off a forklift crane and broke his back. If Imran Khan gains in Pakistani coalition politics, the US military will lose clout in that region.
Prime Minister Recep Erdogan of Turkey just knows that Syria's Baath regime has fired missiles armed with chemical weapons. He has the proof but will not share it. He told Ann Curry on NBC and she made his claim an Exclusive. Her colleague Richard Engel had evidence examined on Wednesday and was not so categorical.
CBS' in-house ex-cop John Miller slipped seamlessly into the argot of a police actioner to retell the sensational simultaneous 26-nation bank heist. It netted $45m after database hackers rigged the limits for pre-paid debit cards. Miller's map followed Jose Reyes all the way down Broadway in Manhattan as he made cash withdrawal after cash withdrawal. And what, we wonder, is the identity of Mr Big? NBC's Tom Costello covered many of the same details, but without the verve.
More biotech genetics. Wednesday, NBC's Robert Bazell introduced us to the Oncotype DX screener that may save men from surgery-induced impotence and incontinence. Now, CBS' in-house physician Jon LaPook tells about the GDF-11 hormone in laboratory mice that may help our hearts grow young again. And, NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman explains a theory why some of us are gym rats and others couch potatoes: our FTO genes are configured differently.
You know those silly segments between the newscasts' second and third commercial island, the ones where the anchors try to showcase their softer side? Brian Williams tries to be sardonic on NBC. Diane Sawyer tries to flaunt her social media savvy with her Instant Index. Well, Rehema Ellis demonstrated on NBC that it would be a better use of their newscasts' resources if they were to assign a correspondent to an extra package instead. Check out Ellis on the effort by Time magazine and Google to animate time-lapse satellite video of changes in the Earth's geography since 1984.
ABC News, which has a corporate sibling in the Disney conglomerate that operates a cruise line, covers the travails of that industry in as much detail as both of its rivals put together. Still, this example by Matt Gutman about the woes at Carnival was a skimpy as can be. He used a mishap discovered in Australia to recycle clips of the squalid sewage aboard Triumph in the Gulf of Mexico. Two passengers were lost overboard -- from a ship he did not name, at an unidentified location somewhere in the South Seas. As for the deck from which they fell, Gutman offered no video, just a Virtual View computer animation.
School days functioned as the closer on ABC and CBS. CBS, which likes inspirational teachers, found double the pleasure, double the fun at Claremont Middle School in Oakland. John Blackstone found the twin principals of campus morale. ABC had Steve Osunsami kick off its America Strong feature series with the twin senior proms of Wilcox County High School in Georgia: one is all-white and guarded and secretive; one is multi-colored and sparkling and viral.
NBC's closer profiled a yet younger demographic. Chelsea Clinton urged us to buy the book by six-year-old Dylan Siegel. Chocolate Bar embodies what is coolest and best and most awesome -- and is Making a Difference by raising funds to save Dylan's best friend's liver.
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