India's Indira Gandhi, Sri Lanka's Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto, Bangladesh's Shaikh Hasina, Philippines' Corazon Aquino and Indonesia's Megawati Sukarnoputri — these women leaders dominated South and South East Asia for much of the past four decades.

SERBIAN ARMY PEACEKEEPING MISSIONS

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra offered Burma's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi her support in a coming by-election during a historic meeting with the Nobel peace laureate in Burma, government spokeswoman Thitima Chaisang said Wednesday.

The two women talked for half an hour at theThai embassy in Rangoon on Tuesday, in a "good atmosphere", the spokeswoman said.

ISLAMABAD: Malala Yousafzai stood up against all odds. In defiance of the Taliban in Swat, she decided to acquire education and helped her peers to do the same. The thirteen-year-old's dauntless struggle is to now be officially recognised.

Predictions for a new year can be risky at the best of times. They can be disastrous when the crystal ball shows South Asia and clairvoyance deals with India-Pakistan diplomacy, or for that matter, with anything to do with South Asia's foreign policies.

Sarah Ajith James arrived in Washington last Sunday night, just five months after her country -- South Sudan -- seceded from Sudan and became the world' s 193rd nation, knowing that the road to equality would be long and difficult for women in the world's newest country.

The United States hopes to prevent and defuse conflicts by getting more women seated at negotiating tables around the world, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Monday.

Clinton said a new U.S. plan, signed by President Barack Obama, would help train and give more voice to female community members who often have a strong sense of how to address dangers and strains in conflict zones.

Despite being denied, again, title to the land on which they have labored, there is no quit in this group of women from El Estribo.

Hurricanes, coups, fire and political manipulation are not stopping Blanca, Helia, Sofia, Narcisa and Maria from working the land left fallow by the Honduran state university and seeking legal title to it.

Peru's government has reopened an investigation into a controversial birth control programme of sterilisation. The announcement has brought fresh hope to the many women and men who feel their rights were violated.

"You give birth like pigs or hamsters!"

Aurelia Paccohuanca remembers those words uttered by nurses when she opposed what was being presented as a solution to Peru's extreme poverty.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn would not have lost his job if he was President of Nicaragua. He would have been re-elected. At least, that is what happened to the former Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega. Accusations that he sexually abused his stepdaughter did not seriously hurt his political career. Shielded by the judiciary and increasingly popular for his social programmes, Ortega went on to be re-elected President of Nicaragua this month.