by Lelety Mabasa
- Zimbabwe -

Always faithful in shocking the world, Zimbabwe has scored yet another first, and as usual, for all the wrong reasons.

• Basket case: A fruit seller in Harare hunts for change. •

"The latest innovation seeks to bring convenience to our farmers who, starting this year's marketing season, are receiving competitive prices for their produce," said acting RBZ Governor Charity Dhliwayo last week.

The RBZ also launched a new Z$500 million bank note for the general public.

What baffled most people, however, was that bearers can use Agro Cheques to purchase goods in supermarkets, just like we do with ordinary notes.

"Either the people at the central bank are now confused or they were too embarrassed to say we are launching such high denominated notes for the public," speculates Noleen Moyo, an employee with a Zimbabwean bank. "To them, that would mean admitting failure in running the economy."

by Faye M. Anderson
- USA -

With only three primaries remaining, the Democratic presidential nomination battle is nearing the finish line. While Barack Obama has won a majority of pledged delegates, he is still short of the 2,026 delegates needed to clinch the nomination.

• Presidential candidate Barack Obama. Photograph by jurvetson. •

The fact is, Obama racked up his insurmountable delegate lead before snippets of sermons by Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. exploded on Americans’ TV screens and computer monitors. While Obama has since severed ties with Wright, the political damage has been done.

by Bia Assevero
- USA / France -

Justine Henin was on top of the tennis world. Literally.

The 25 year old Belgian was number one in the Women’s Tennis Association rankings and despite her less than stellar form of late, she was still a serious contender for the French Open which began this week. It’s a tournament close to Henin’s heart as she’s won it four times. She is, in fact, the three time defending champion.

• Justine Henin at the 2007 US Open. Photograph by Ian Gampon. •

But Henin has and will continue to fiercely deny those speculations; at the press conference where she announced her departure, she admitted that she’d been considering retirement for nearly a year. There’s a strong probability that the troubles in her personal life (Henin divorced from her husband in 2007) haven’t helped, but Henin’s retirement is actually a sign of a different trend.

by Carrie R. Sparrevohn
- USA -

In 2005 I traveled to Uganda, East Africa, for the first time. I met Margaret Nangobi on that trip, in Mwanyangiri, a tiny village about an hour’s drive from the capitol. What transpired between us broke my privileged self in pieces and I became the receiver one hundred fold of what I was to give.

• Margaret and her granddaughter Loi with their kitchen and home in the background. •

For every mother that dies in the US of pregnancy, Uganda loses 50. Around the world, each minute, we lose one mother as a direct result of her pregnancy. Improving women’s access to experienced care providers, antibiotics and medication to prevent or stop hemorrhaging would prevent over half of these deaths.

As I prepared to spend November 2005 in Uganda, a wonderful friend and mentor, Jan McNabb, began to tell her friends what I was planning to do. People began handing her money for the needy in Uganda. As a result, the Sally Clinic Project of With Woman was born.

by Binalakshmi Nepram Mentschel
- India -

Our world is hovering at the edge of an abyss, driven there by man’s unreason. One crisis is cresting on top of another… The sinister developments in the advance towards the brink of disaster all interact, worsened by the calamitous threat - namely the arms race and militarization. These essentially ethical problems of wars, weapons, and tools of violence have existed since time immemorial, but in the present era they have been deeply aggravated and will continue to be aggravated if a halt is not called for. – Nobel Peace Laureate Alva Myrdal

May 24th is celebrated globally as International Women’s Day for Peace and Disarmament. This article was written in honor of the many women who have campaigned tirelessly for global peace.

by Suad Hamada
- Bahrain -

“The land that I grew to love, hates my babies.” This is sadly what many Bahraini women of stateless children think to themselves every single day of their lives.

Like outcasts, they feel helplessly pulled between a country they call home and their children who should be recognized as citizens but aren’t, only because they decided to marry foreigners.

by Pilirani Semu-Banda
- Malawi -

Sixty-three year old Gladys Kasito, in Malawi’s capital city, Lilongwe, only has one wish – to die peacefully, preferably in her sleep. Kasito says she feels trapped and threatened in her own country. Her community, including her own family, has disowned her. She says everyone is baying for her blood. Kasito has been labeled a witch.

Her face is heavily scarred, she walks with a limp, and has no front teeth. Kasito is recovering from the wounds she sustained when her neighbors demolished her house early one February morning and beat her up. A few passers-by rescued her and took her to hospital.

“All I want is to die, but peacefully. I no longer want to go through the mental and physical ordeal that I was subjected to. They call me a witch just because I am old and no longer pretty,” worries Kasito.

by Anna Clark
- USA -

Who talks about prisoners these days? Certainly not the US presidential candidates or most others up for election in 2008, unless it’s in tangential “get tough on crime” rhetoric. In the media, quality coverage such as Jeff Gerritt’s Pulitzer-nominated series on medical care in Michigan prisons, which appeared last year in The Detroit Free Press, is overshadowed by courtroom dramas and legal thrillers. MSNBC has built something of a franchise in its “To Catch a Predator” series, which lures people to a Dateline set, humiliates them by reading their chat room transcripts with someone they thought was underage, and then calls on a police crew to rather unnecessarily tackle them in an arrest sequence right out of a summer blockbuster.

Authentic communication from and about prisoners exists, but it’s relegated to a niche market outside of most print and online news sources, of influential political blogs, of the catalogues of big publishers, and of the speeches of election year candidates. Presumably, its minimal share of attention is justified because decision makers think their audiences don’t care much about prisons and the people in them.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

Last year Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told an audience at Columbia University, “In Iran, we don't have homosexuals, like in your country.” His characteristically outrageous comment was met with laughter and boos; discrimination is no laughing matter in a country where homosexuality is punishable by death.

But after seeing the documentary film Be Like Others Ahmadinejad’s statement may be technically true. The 76 minute documentary by Iranian-American filmmaker Tanaz Eshaghian, whose previous film Love Iranian-American Style documented her Iranian family’s involvement in her love life, profiles Iran’s leading gender reassignment doctor Dr. Bahram Mehrjalali (also spelled as Dr. Bahram Mir Jalai) and his patients.

by Rose-Anne Clermont
- Germany -

Around the time little girls become preoccupied with their own reflections, I remember scanning the various jars of creams and tonics on my mother’s make-up table. I couldn’t yet read so well, but I noticed on the labels that the word AGE was always belittled by a hyphen and another word that “combated,” “defied” or “anti’d” it in some way. Once I started playing with make-up samples in drugstores, I’d see row upon row of these labels: anti-wrinkle; anti-aging; age-defying. Before I reached puberty, I had learned that aging was something to protest.

by Marianne Taflinger
- USA -

In Sweden, a doctor delivers Sari, and her family celebrates what will be the beginning of a long life, probably 83 years or more. She’ll attend at least 17 years of school and if she chooses to have children, they’ll be born when she wants them to be born, thanks to convenient and cheap contraceptives. If she has a baby, she’ll take off 15 weeks of work and still earn 80% of her salary. Sari is virtually guaranteed to make it to age 5 without any health complications and enroll in secondary school. Swedish society provides great health care and education that eases both mothers’ and girls’ lives.

By contrast, Adame will live a far more perilous life. Having been born in Niger, she has a high probability of dying before age 5. Like two thirds of all children born in Niger, no “skilled birth attendant” was present at her delivery. It’s likely that Adame will attend only 3 grades in school, and that she will die by age 45, living a life half as long than if she had been born in Sweden. Adame’s mother is practically guaranteed to lose at least one child and has a nine out of ten probability that she will lose 2 children in her lifetime. Due to the lack of contraception, Adame will likely have more siblings than her family can afford. And there’s a strong chance that Adame will suffer from malnutrition and lack a sufficient supply of water.

by Bia Assevero
- USA / France -

Ruud Gullit knows his soccer.

He’s Dutch for one thing, and the Dutch have produced some of the most spectacular talents that the modern era of the game has ever seen. From Van Basten to Bergkamp, from Rijkaard to Gullit himself, the Dutch have redefined the game more than once.

by Constance Manika
- Zimbabwe -

In the early hours of April 25th, Tariro Gweru and her husband Wellington awoke to a deafening knock on their bedroom hut. Wellington says he identified the frantic voices of his two friends, Simon Takavada and Misheck Dzikamai, got up and quickly opened the door.

As his two friends made their way breathlessly into his house, Wellington knew there was something seriously wrong. Simon and Misheck indeed had bad news: while coming home after having a beer, the two spotted trucks packed with ZANU PF youths, war veterans and soldiers making their way to their village.

by Sarah Wyatt
- USA -

Years of hardship and backbreaking labor in the riot-stricken slums of Kibera in south Kenya have worn 18 year old Eshe Koome to the bone. A single mother of two, she walked out on her abusive husband and survived for two years as a daily wage laborer, loading vegetables and other goods for sale.

• Eshe is now able to earn a living wage at Kazuri. Photograph by Sarah Wyatt. •

Eshe's story captures in a nutshell how a group of formerly indigent, urban women operates a business for themselves. The Kazuri Bead Factory, located in the Nairobi suburb of Karen, is unique in that it is Kenya’s first visitors’ attraction of its kind, created for and by women. Founded by Lady Susan Wood in 1975, the company is known for its beautiful, hand-painted beads made from the authentic clay from the Mt. Kenya area. Kazuri (Swahili for “small and beautiful”), also produces a number of other goods popular with tourists including pottery, hand-beaded sandals and purses. The beads are often featured on three-dimensional art cards and can also be found in shadowboxes.

by Nancy Van Ness
- USA -

I knew it was bad, but I didn't know just how bad. Colonel Ann Wright, retired US Army, grabbed the audience’s attention at a panel called Women in the Military, hosted last month by Women Center Stage in New York City, when she said that one in three women in the military is sexually abused by her male colleagues. Ann wants to see huge signs displaying this statistic in every recruiting office, to let young women know what to expect if they sign up.

by Nomi Prins
- USA -

How sad. Exxon Mobil, the universe’s largest publicly traded company, which also happens to be enjoying some of its biggest profits ever thanks to the almost doubled price of oil during the past year, didn’t quite live up to Wall Street expectations this week. In fact, its stock fell nearly 4% the day it announced its first quarter of 2008 earnings.

Unfortunately, this does not make the pain at the pump pulsing through the nation any more bearable. Apparently, Exxon could have made more profit, had it not chosen to hold back further gas price hikes. Instead, earnings in its refining business (which converts crude oil to gallons of useable gas) weren’t as strong as it had wanted. Yes, that’s right – Exxon would have made even more money had they passed more pain onto the public. They were just being “nice.” Right.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

What makes The Linguists so entertaining are the stars’ contagious love of linguistics; between them they speak over 25 languages and have devoted their professional lives to traveling around the world – on screen they venture to Siberia, India, and Bolivia – documenting obscure languages on the verge of extinction. Their work is exciting because Harrison and Anderson are up against the clock: currently there over 7,000 languages spoken around the world, but one is disappearing every two weeks.