A total of 20 teenage girls have benefited from a 10-day training organized by the Thorough Empowerment and Development for Women and Girls in Sierra Leone (TEDEWOSIL) in collaboration with the Institute for Contemporary Art and Science (ICAS) in Slovenia.

The government's tardy response to a recommendation to revoke 154 discriminative bylaws against women have paved the way for the deliberation of 15 new equally discriminative bylaws, the National Commission on Violence against Women (Komnas Perempuan) said Friday.

Natalya Estemirova is gone now. Her executioners forced her into a car in front of her home in Chechnya and sped away with her on Wednesday morning. She managed to shout that she was being kidnapped, her last known words documenting the beginning of the crimes against her, just as she had documented crimes against uncountable others.

Girls are made of sugar and spice, and everything nice. Boys are made of snips and snails, and puppy-dog tails.

The famous lines — made popular through an old nursery rhyme — might sound nothing but funny to us. But if we look beyond those amusing words, we will soon realize they are ridden with gender stereotypes.

A year after a human rights worker, Natalia Estemirova, was abducted outside her home in Chechnya and found dead beside a highway, the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, said the authorities had identified her killer and were searching for the person who ordered her murder.

Earlier this year, Sharia police arrested a 20-year-old college student and her boyfriend for indecency; they had been spending time together even though they were not legally married.

Her boyfriend was released, but she was detained and then allegedly raped by three policemen. Two of the men are on trial, while the third is at large.

"Instead of moaning all the time, why don't you create your own (political) party?" some men asked Brigitte Rabemanantsoa Rasamoelina, a female politician from Madagascar. She accepted the challenge and in February formed Ampela Mano Politika, a political party which started with only 22 female members and now has over 5,000 female members ... and 10 men.

Insurance companies in Iran will have to pay the same compensation for women and men in the case of death or injury, the Iranian government has said. Previously, insurance policies have paid women or their families half of what a man or his relatives receive. Iranian Justice Minister Gholamhoseyn Elham said the companies would also have to make equal payouts to Muslims and non-Muslims.

Three women and a child from one family were killed and six others wounded when gunmen attacked a house near the city of Fallujah in Anbar province early on Wednesday, a provincial police source said.

A UN report on Iraq shows human rights in the country remain a cause for concern, in spite of improvements in security.