By Maggie Michael DAMASCUS (Reuters) -“Don’t wait for her,” the WhatsApp caller told the family of Abeer Suleiman on May 21, hours after she vanished from the streets of the Syrian town of Safita. “She’s not coming back.” Suleiman’s kidnapper and another man who identified himself as an intermediary said in subsequent calls and messages…
Charlotte Webb, who as a young woman helped code breakers decipher enemy signals at Britain’s top-secret Bletchley Park, died on Monday. She was 101. Her death was confirmed by the Women’s Royal Army Corps Association and by the Bletchley Park Trust. Ms. Webb, known as Betty, was 18 when she joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service,…
The United States is ending its financial support for family planning programs in developing countries, cutting nearly 50 million women off from access to contraception. This policy change has attracted little attention amid the wholesale dismantling of American foreign aid, but it stands to have enormous implications, including more maternal deaths and an overall increase…
The extremists began by asserting control over women’s bodies. In the political vacuum that has emerged after the overthrow of Bangladesh’s authoritarian leader, religious fundamentalists in one town declared that young women could no longer play soccer. In another, they forced the police to free a man who had harassed a woman for not covering…
Track and field will introduce mandatory DNA sex testing for athletes entering female competitions, its global leader said Tuesday, making it the first Olympic sport to add the requirement. The move comes amid an increasingly vexed debate over eligibility rules in female sports and comes less than a year after the issue erupted at the…
Two days after a coalition of conservatives won Germany’s federal election last month, the governor of Bavaria took to Instagram to say the party was “ready for political change” and posted a group picture of the likely future chancellor, Friedrich Merz, with five other leaders. The photo seemed to suggest that a changed Germany will…
U.S. foreign aid cuts impacting Sudanese refugees in Chad have reduced already razor-thin margins for lifesaving resources like food and water, and other U.S. government-funded programs including mental health counseling and education. “When we told [the students] the decision, that we’re going to close the school, most of them were crying,” said Aballah Abakar Abdallah,…
A United Nations commission on Thursday accused Israel of targeting hospitals and other health facilities in Gaza that provide reproductive services, including an I.V.F. clinic where thousands of embryos were destroyed, in what it called an effort to prevent Palestinian births. The report by the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, called…
This article is part of a Women and Leadership special report highlighting women who are charting new pathways and fighting for opportunities for women and others. When Gil Won-ok, a Korean woman, died recently at the age of 96, the international community lost an outspoken warrior in the effort to make Japan accountable for its…
The video blogger had visited Dongji Village, in eastern China, to find a man known for raising eight children despite deep poverty. The man had become a favorite interview subject for influencers looking to attract donations and clicks. But that day, one of the children led the blogger to someone not featured in many other…