KANDAHAR, Afghanistan A gunman lying in wait shot and killed an 18-year-old woman as she left her job at a U.S.-based development company Tuesday, casting a spotlight on a stepped-up campaign of Taliban intimidation against women in this southern city where U.S. troops plan a major operation in the coming weeks.

Sudan's first multiparty elections in 24 years, which wrapped up earlier this week, fell short of international standards but should be recognized as an important step forward for the nation, observers said Saturday.

Khalida married her husband Asad in Pakistan through an arrangement made by their families. (Their names are changed here to protect Khalida.) She finished medical school and began her residency a month after she was married. Her husband was immediately abusive and jealous: He restricted Khalida's movement and forced her to be accompanied wherever she went, including to work.

I went to see the film Avatar the other day. As you know, it's about a people, the Na'vi, on another planet: Pandora. They have a culture that is respectful of nature, unexploitative, integrated and empathetic with other life forms. Unfortunately they also have a mineral that people of planet Earth lust after. Human space ships and personnel are out to destroy this pleasant people and appropriate their valuable resource.

Tzvia Greenfield. Israel's first Haredi female to be elected to the Knesset, she is a fierce critic of her own community's attitudes to the peace process and modernity; describing the Haredi community as being "incapable of compromise." Yet she still lives in it, a resident of the Jerusalem suburb of Har Nof.

Survey reveals that sixty percent of rape victims gang raped, more than half in their own homes, appalling increase in number of civilian rapists

A workshop on conflict prevention, mediation and peace-building for women leaders from member states of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) was concluded on 12 January in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, with the participants agreeing on a number of recommendations related to women's involvement in conflict resolution.

Politically motivated sexual violence directed against women is an issue that is seldom the subject of widespread media coverage yet it profoundly affects millions of women in communities worldwide. Organized rape is a tactic used to denigrate and repress political prisoners and victims of war and it is often under reported due to the stigma attached to being a victim of this crime in many parts of the world.

The number of women raped in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where sexual violence committed by warring factions has become endemic, topped 8,000 last year, according to fresh estimates released by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

Amnesty International has urged the Ugandan authorities to provide support for women seeking justice for sexual and domestic violence in a new report highlighting the barriers faced by the victims.

I Can't Afford Justice – Violence against women in Uganda documents the economic and social obstacles to justice, including the costs of criminal investigations and discrimination by government officials.