Want to get publicity for a little-known city in the frozen Canadian North?

Do a little science experiment, and post it on YouTube. That's what Samantha Stuart did, and bingo! she and Yellowknife suddenly find themselves on the world map.

Stuart is the Marketing Partnership Coordinator at Northwest Territories Tourism, and something tells me she might be in line for a promotion in the not-to-distant future...

If there's a human face on Rising China, it belongs not to some Politburo chief, not to an Internet tycoon, but to a quiet, mild-mannered teenage girl named Hou Yifan.

Hou (whose name is pronounced Ho Ee-fahn) is an astonishing phenomenon: At 16, she is the new women's world chess champion, the youngest person, male or female, ever to win a world championship.

And she reflects the way China — by investing heavily in education and human capital, particularly in young women — is increasingly having an outsize impact on every aspect of the world.

Napoleon is famously said to have declared, "When China wakes, it will shake the world." That is becoming true even in spheres that China historically has had little connection with, like chess, basketball, rare earth minerals, cyber warfare, space exploration and nuclear research.

The naked picture in Glamour magazine of a model with a tiny roll of fat around her middle caused a commotion amongst women and the fashion media in 2009.

At 5 feet 11 inches (180 centimeters), and 12.5 stone (175 pounds/79 kilograms), 20-year-old Lizzie Miller, who wears sizes 12-14, agrees that it's astonishing that she's considered a "plus size" model.  "It's sad," she says. "In the industry anything over size six is considered a plus-size."

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2011-01-04 Posted in Women In the News

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In the countdown to her inauguration on Jan. 1, Brazilian President-elect Dilma Rousseff has completed her cabinet, which points to a government of continuity whose most novel aspect will be a greater female presence.

It was not easy for the president-elect to choose the 37 ministers in her cabinet while at the same time satisfying all of the allied political forces, confirming her loyalty to her left-wing Workers' Party (PT) -- which will be the governing party for a third consecutive term -- and giving continuity to the policies of an eight-year administration that is coming to an end with 80 percent support.

But true to her reputation as a pragmatic seasoned administrator, which she proved herself to be as chief of staff to her predecessor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Rousseff found a way to strengthen her relationship with her party, avert a crisis with her allies, and tackle the pending tasks.

The result: a cabinet that includes nine women, several of whom were put in key positions, such as planning, social development and the environment.

Kainat Soomro should have stayed silent. After being battered and gang raped for four days her traditional, conservative village in rural Pakistan expected the 13-year-old girl to keep her story to herself.

She refused.

Since then her dark brown eyes and striking features have become a staple of the country's newspapers and television news channels, as she fights for justice and a new voice for women in a deeply conservative country.

Nothing has stopped her. Not the murder of her brother, threats from the men she says raped her or a death sentence imposed by the elders of her village, Dadu, in Sindh province.