A visually-impared young woman emerged tops in the mid-year final exams in Dubai. Mais Ahmad Hamudi scored 97.8 per cent and was ranked among the top scorers.

"I don't think the finals were difficult," said 16-year-old Hamudi. "Of course the exam was different from what we are accustomed to. The questions looked different and indirect, but it was easy to work out the answers. It's all there in the new curriculum. One just had to think through and analyse more in these tests."

The ambitious and inspiring young woman spent a lot of time translating some of her books from written form to Braille, with the assistance of her parents and siblings. Books written in Braille are not easily supplied in schools, Hamudi says.

Siham Al Najami
Gulf News

The mother frantically searched through the house calling to her young child.  Finally she dashed out into the cold January night, and stopped dead in her tracks.

‘What are you doing out here?” she said in alarm.

The child stared up at the night sky, eyes searching, and solemnly replied: “They said Mrs. O’Sullivan went up to the stars – but I can’t find her Mommy – I can’t see her anywhere.”

The mother’s heart broke a little. She gathered the child into her arms, and took him inside.  It had been a very long day. 

Judy O’Sullivan was a bridge builder.

She created wonderful long-standing structures and solid foundations throughout her lifetime.  Building enduring structures takes a lot of time, energy and intelligence. But instead of bricks, metal and mortar, she worked with stronger elements - light, enthusiasm and encouragement.

Judy built bridges of love.

Posted January 17, 2009

On a recent afternoon, about two dozen women, all dressed in candy-pink saris, gathered beneath the cool shade of a gnarled banyan to hear a diminutive woman – referred to as “commander” – deliver what seemed like a military briefing.

“If your husband beats you for stepping out of the house, you firmly tell him you are not his slave,” she said, her face beetroot-red. “You tell him that he should sit at home and take care of the kids.”

All heads nodded in agreement.

The “commander” is Sampat Pal, 46, a woman with little education, who heads an all-female, pink-clad vigilante group, that strikes fear in the hearts of adulterers, wife beaters and other wrongdoers. They are called the Gulabi gang. In Hindi, gulabi means pink.

Since their formation two years ago in Banda, an impoverished and lawless district in the rural interiors of Uttar Pradesh, the Gulabi gang has gone after wife-beaters with lathis, the traditional Indian bamboo baton. They have also taken their fight to corrupt policemen. In this rural landscape, where bureaucracy makes life difficult, they goad apathetic government officials into action by shame.

Anuj Chopra
The National (Abu Dhabi)

See also:
Pink Rocks
Pink Rocks (Again)

Nancy Bird-Walton was born in the New South Wales north coast town of Kew in 1915.

Walton became the first female pilot to get her commercial pilot's licence at the age of 19.

She wanted to fly from the age of four and she was taught to take the controls when she was just 17 by Charles Kingsford Smith.

This story was written by Dr. Nurit Peled Elhanan, Israeli peace activist, lecturer at Hebrew University, and mother of one daughter, 13-year-old Smadari Elhanan, who was killed 11 years ago by a Palestinian suicide bomber; it was originally published online in January 2007 by Counter Punch.

Bassam Aramin spent nine years in an Israeli prison. He belonged to Yasser Arafat's Al Fatah in the Hebron area and attempted to throw a grenade at an Israeli army Jeep in occupied Hebron.

Last Wednesday morning, an Israeli soldier in a jeep in his village of Anata, on the West Bank, shot his nine year old daughter, Abir, in the head. The soldier will not spend an hour in jail. In Israel, soldiers are not imprisoned for killing Arabs. Never. It does not matter whether the Arabs are young or old, real or potential terrorists, peaceful demonstrators or stone throwers.