Ninety years after the 19th Amendment enshrined women's right to political participation in the US Constitution, women may be having one of their most influential years yet in American politics, analysts say.

The women's movement in Uganda last week called for the fast implementation of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325. This call comes ahead of the 10th anniversary since the world body urged governments to ensure security of women and their participation in conflict prevention and resolution.

Iranian authorities have suspended the execution by stoning of a woman convicted of adultery, the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday, after weeks of condemnation from around the world.

"The verdict regarding the extramarital affairs has stopped and it's being reviewed," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told Iran's state-run English-language Press TV.

JUBA - The World Bank Vice President for Africa Region, Ms Obiageli Oby Ezekwesili on her visit to Juba Teaching Hospital has said that the maternal mortality rate in southern Sudan is very high and unacceptable. She made this statement during a press briefing in which she gave an appraisal on the Bank projects in the region. The Minister of Finance and Economic Planning David Deng Athorbei also attended the function.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military has fought wars unlike any in American history. Neither war has had clear front lines — meaning that anywhere can turn into a combat zone.

And that means that women, who officially don't have combat roles, have been battle-tested — few more so than Chief Warrant Officer Stephanie Rose.

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has taken several measures to improve the protection of civilians in the east of the country following the recent incidents of mass rape, but establishing State authority in conflict-affected areas would be the most effective way to end lawlessness and violence, a senior UN official said today.

While recent events in the Democratic Republic of Congo have sparked international debate, at the UN, official declarations have lacked transparency.

In a press videoconference, UN Special Representative for the Democratic Republic of Congo Roger Meece spoke on behalf of the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO).

Approximately 500 women were raped in eastern Congo in July and August, demonstrating that both rebel militias and government troops used sexual violence as a weapon, two senior United Nations officials said Tuesday.

UN troops failed the victims of mass rapes in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo where more than 500 sex assaults have now been reported in the past month, a top UN peacekeeping official said Tuesday.

Atul Khare, under secretary general for peacekeeping operations, warned of a growing "culture of sexual violence" in the stricken region where rival groups are fighting for control of gold and mineral wealth.

IT'S normal, an aid worker told her, not to menstruate after suffering severe trauma such as enduring an earthquake.
But when her period still hadn't shown up five months after January's massive tremor that claimed the lives of her husband and hundreds of thousand others in Port-au-Prince, the desperate woman spent a precious $2 on a pill to abort the fetus she knew she could never support.