Amina had run away to avoid marrying a man her family had forcibly betrothed her to, and agreed to return only after her family had signed guarantees that she would not be harmed. For good measure, her father and brother repeated their vows on video camera at the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in Baghlan Province, and she left with them.
She never reached home. Hours after she got into her family’s car, a gang of gunmen dragged her out of the vehicle and shot her to death, her brother and uncle later claimed. Everyone else was unharmed.

The anniversary comes at a time of historic milestones, including the anniversary of the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which have repeatedly put a focus on the Obamas’ place as the first black occupants of the White House. But Brown v. Board of Education had more of a direct impact on Mrs. Obama than on her husband and shaped her life in ways she does not always openly discuss.

“The plan was to assemble together the student council members,” she said. “From this, we would formulate plans to go on strike. We would make signs and I would give a speech stating our dissatisfaction and we would march out [of] the school and people would hear us and see us and understand our difficulty and would sympathize with our plight and would grant us our new school building and our teachers would be proud and the students would learn more and it would be grand.”

LAHORE, Pakistan — A pregnant Pakistani woman was beaten to death by her family outside a courthouse in the eastern city of Lahore on Tuesday because she had defied their wishes and married the man of her choice, police officials said.
Police investigators said that the woman, Farzana Parveen, 25, was beaten to death on a busy street as a crowd of about 30 men watched, but did nothing.

HONG KONG — A well-known Cambodian crusader against sex trafficking who attracted celebrity support to her cause has resigned from the foundation she started after being confronted with allegations that she and others connected to her group fabricated stories about their experiences as young victims of the sex trade. Somaly Mam resigned from the foundation that bears her name days after Newsweek reported that key assertions she made — including being sold into slavery at age 9 or 10 and spending a decade in a brothel — were untrue.

Ending abuse in the sex trade requires action that is less telegenic than a photo op or a gala. Last week, the International Labor Organization issued a new report on forced labor and recommendations to combat it with the collection of accurate data, effective protection of victims, and the support of workers in their own organizing. It’s a broader fight against poverty, inequality and vulnerability that goes far beyond a brothel’s walls.

“It all has to come to this,” Mr. Rodger says, his voice at once placid and chilling. “Tomorrow is the day of retribution. The day I will have my retribution against humanity. Against all of you. For the last eight years of my life, ever since I hit puberty, I’ve been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection and unfulfilled desires. All because girls have never been attracted to me. In those years I’ve had to rot in loneliness.”
“I do not know why you girls aren’t attracted to me,” he said, “But I will punish you all for it.”

The three of them had so many things in common -- all studying to be engineers at UC Santa Barbara, all from immigrant Chinese families, all grew up in the Bay Area -- that it seems inevitable they would have found each other once they left home. But three days after Cheng Yuan "James" Hong, George Chen and Weihan "David" Wang were savagely murdered in the first grotesque spasm of a killing spree by Elliot Rodger near the university campus, there were more questions than answers about how two of them came to be their killer's roommates.

TT - Tại cuộc họp báo thường kỳ quý 2-2014 của Bảo hiểm xã hội VN ngày 12-5, trưởng ban thu (Bảo hiểm xã hội VN) Trần Đình Liệu cho biết Luật bảo hiểm xã hội sửa đổi đang chuẩn bị đệ trình Quốc hội sẽ sửa đổi một số điểm đáng chú ý.