Dear Asma,

Zimbabwean police have disrupted a Valentine's Day march aimed at promoting peace and love between foes in the troubled southern African nation.

Scores of South Asian charities struggling to curb high child-marriage rates are backing a global movement spearheaded by South African peace icon Archbishop Desmond Tutu to end the practice affecting millions of girls and women worldwide.

In 1990, a man accused his wife, the mother of three children, of having an affair and killed her. His in-laws didn't file any charges against him in court. Instead, they said the death of their daughter was an accident. The man remarried and had two more children.

The Pentagon has announced new rules that bring women in the military closer to the front lines but still don't allow women soldiers to serve in the infantry, special forces or other jobs that would send them directly into combat.

ROKO tui Cakaudrove Ro Aca Mataitini is urging all village headmen and church leaders on Taveuni to prioritise the needs of women and children on the island.

Yesterday, a team from the Cakaudrove Provincial Council office visited Naselesele village to inform people on the roles of women and children in a family.

A forum on violence against women will be held in Nicaragua on Friday, after the recent approval of a comprehensive legislation on the issue that combines preventive policies and tougher sentences.

Grisly and ghastly are probably the most apt words to describe the story that appeared in this newspaper yesterday, of a young woman whose hands were chopped off by an angry ex-husband (Man held over attack on ex-wife, Daily Monitor, February 6).

35-year-old woman walked through a field in northern Mozambique, near where a group of teenage boys were undergoing their ritual circumcision into adulthood.