An Afghan teenager who was horribly mutilated by her husband under Taliban rule was all smiles as she unveiled her new prosthetic nose for the first time.

Aisha, 19, shocked the world when she appeared on the cover of Time Magazine to lift the veil on the plight of many women in Afghanistan.

Yesterday, she bravely faced the public wearing a prosthetic nose - one that gives her some idea of how she will look after having reconstructive surgery.

She went before the TV cameras to receive the Enduring Heart award at a benefit for the Grossman Burn Foundation - the Los Angeles-based organisation that paid for her surgery.

On October 28th, women across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will descend on Jeddah to form the largest ever human breast cancer chain. By forming this chain, Saudi women are intending to break a world record and engrave their name in Guiness Book of world records!

Breast Cancer is the top most common form of cancer within Saudi population, which really reminds us the dire need of health awareness programs and centres for women in Saudi Arabia.

“HRH Princess Reema Bint Bandar, Al Bidaya Center and the Zahra Breast Cancer Association hope to increase awareness on breast cancer and let women and families affected by this disease know that they are not alone," says Manal Quota.

Susan notes: Dilma Rousseff was elected Brazil's first female president on October 30, 2010; she once told reporters that as a typical Brazilian girl in the 1950s she dreamed of becoming a ballerina.

Susan notes: An October 4 update on this story from The Guradian says: Ruling party candidate Dilma Rousseff has taken an early lead in Brazil's presidential election – but a second-round vote is possible, an exit poll has indicated. Rousseff, who could become the first woman to lead South America's largest democracy, is ahead in the race, but lacks the majority of votes needed to avoid a run-off, results show.

The world's most powerful woman will start coming into her own next weekend. Stocky and forceful at 63, this former leader of the resistance to a Western-backed military dictatorship (which tortured her) is preparing to take her place as President of Brazil.

As head of state, president Dilma Rousseff would outrank Angela Merkel, Germany's Chancellor, and Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State: her enormous country of 200 million people is revelling in its new oil wealth. Brazil's growth rate, rivalling China's, is one that Europe and Washington can only envy.

Her widely predicted victory in next Sunday's presidential poll will be greeted with delight by millions. It marks the final demolition of the "national security state", an arrangement that conservative governments in the US and Europe once regarded as their best artifice for limiting democracy and reform. It maintained a rotten status quo that kept a vast majority in poverty in Latin America while favouring their rich friends.

By Julie Keats
Originally published here

Noora Naraghi recently traveled all the way to Tallahassee, Florida, USA to learn motocross from Stefy Bau, former two-time women's world motocross champion and owner/instructor of 211 MX school, the elite worldwide motocross academy for women.

Naraghi had already made headline news in Iran and worldwide when she decided to go against her country’s laws and create the first ever women motocross championship in Iran. The race was held last year at the club Naraghi and her family own, and despite skepticism from many, it was an incredible success.

Forty female Marines volunteered to go to the highly segregated southern Pashtun region to try to connect with the half of the population inaccessible to male Marines.

Sgt. Vanessa Jones and her teammates filed through the countryside with a squad of U.S. infantrymen and Afghan troops. They pushed through tall grass and leaped over canals, spilling into fields of sunflowers and the emerald spikes of marijuana plants rustling above their helmets. Then they waited, tucked into a ridge of dirt, while fellow Marines checked on a bomb dug into the road.

Jones and her partner, Lance Cpl. Yvonne Blanco, were among a group of 40 volunteers who deployed to Afghanistan this spring to serve as Female Engagement Teams, a detachment organized by the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton.