Susan notes: This story by Sarah Polson, originally headed "Poker Babes Good For The Game," is republished with permission from www.pokerlistings.com, which is blocked in some locations.

Pretty women and poker - they're not mutually exclusive, but they're also not something the typical person naturally associates.

But there are more than a few women who are passionate about playing poker, and they’re creating a powerful challenge to stereotypes.

Vanessa Rousso (left) turned up the heat recently at the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship, AND in the pages of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. That combination gives whole new meaning to the old cliché: “Not just a pretty face.”

Tiffany Michelle gained notoriety at the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event as the last woman standing. Now, she, Erica Schoenberg and Evelyn Ng are scheduled to do a photo shoot for Knockout Magazine.

They're successful, they're hot, and they’re passionate about poker. That means a lot more people outside the usual poker circle will get to see that poker is no longer just a backroom card game played by old men.

It would be bizarre in any country to find that its lingerie shops are staffed entirely by men.

But in Saudi Arabia - an ultra-conservative nation where unmarried men and women cannot even be alone in a room together if they are not related - it is strange in the extreme. Women, forced to negotiate their most intimate of purchases with male strangers, call the situation appalling and are demanding the system be changed.

Click here to see the full article
By By Stephanie Hancock
BBC News, Jeddah

Related links:
BBC telephone interview with Saudi woman
Saudi women to spurn lingerie shops over salesmen

When Pat and Marian Kennedy arrived in Al Ain in Nov 1960, the infant mortality rate in Al Ain was 50 per cent and maternal mortality was at 35 per cent.

The Kennedys and their four children had left the comforts of life in the US at the invitation of Sheikh Zayed, the founder of the UAE, and his brother Sheikh Shakhbut, the then ruler of Abu Dhabi, to establish the Oasis Hospital, where they served for 15 years.

Since 1960, 90,000 babies have been delivered at the hospital they founded. Today the infant mortality rate stands below one per cent and maternal mortality is virtually unheard of.

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By Essam Al Ghalib
The National, Abu Dhabi, UAE

Related AWR links:
Gertrude's Story: Canadian nurse Gertrude Dyck worked at Al Ain's first hospital with the Kennedys for several decades. A serialised account of some of her memories of her time there is being published on AWR.

 

Excerpts from an article by India-based Globe & Mail correspondent Stephanie Nolan:

A staggering 40 per cent of undernourished children in the world are Indian; the rate here is twice as high as it is in all of Sub-Saharan Africa and five times higher than in China.

The land of the economic boom finishes third-last on Unicef's global list of child nourishment, worse than either Sudan or Ethiopia. In fact, the number of starving children is increasing 2.5 per cent annually, while population growth is barely 1.4 per cent.

Breastfeeding – a free, critical intervention that can make a massive difference in survival past the first month of life – is a fraught part of the nutrition puzzle here.

Ms. Adivasi says that she waited until three days after Devsingh was born to nurse her son. For the first two days, which Unicef calls the most critical for determining infant health, she gave him nothing, believing her colostrum (the antibody-rich, yellow liquid new mother's bodies produce before milk) was unhealthy.

Overhearing her recount this, a couple of village men jump into the discussion: “Even an animal would not feed its child with its first milk!” one man says. Another adds, “No woman here would be allowed to give that to a baby.”

India's central government has helpfully put up billboards at the entrance to many of these villages, extolling the virtue of colostrum in lines of Hindi script that, of course, almost no one here can read.

Photo by Zackary Canepari/For The Globe and Mail

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By Stephanie Nolan
Globe & Mail, Canada

Related AWR links:
Napalese Women Confined by Tradition

In a dojo, or martial arts training area, in a poor working class suburb of Cairo, women in karate uniforms and tracksuits are learning to fight off an assailant.

In this male-dominated society it is unusual to see these women in their headscarves sparring with men, but such is the concern here at the rise of sexual harassment cases that the number attending this class grows every month.

"I was on my way home from school and I was attacked - I didn't know what to do," she said.

Shaza Saeed, 14, is one of the new recruits.

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By Christian Fraser
BBC News, Cairo