Amid charges Republicans are waging a war on women, House Republicans have launched a new committee aimed at combating that criticism. The Women's Policy Committee says it has a goal of "raising the profile of GOP women in their roles as lawmakers, highlighting their diverse achievements, and providing a unique, unified voice on a wide range of critically important issues." The committee will include all 24 female Republicans in the House—all of whom introduced themselves in a YouTube video. Whether the move will attract more women to vote for the GOP ticket this fall is an open question. Twenty-two of the legislators voted to roll back the Violence Against Women Act, and 21 of them cosponsored the bill that would allow employers to avoid offering contraception through their health plans, according to ThinkProgress.

Burma’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi plans to visit Norway and the U.K. this summer, her first trip out of the country in 24 years. She spent almost 20 years under house arrest in Burma, and refused to leave the country lest the military government refuse to let her back in. She was unable to go to Oslo in 1991 to receive her Nobel Peace Prize, or to visit the U.K. to see her dying husband in 1999. She was released from house arrest in November 2010 and elected to Parliament last month.

When Shaima Alawadi was found bludgeoned to death last month near San Diego, many assumed it was a hate crime motivated by her Muslim roots because a note was left by her body calling her a terrorist. But now investigators are focusing on her family. Police believe Alawadi had plans to divorce her husband after talking with family members and finding legal documents in her car that indicated she was trying to leave the marriage. They are also looking into her daughter’s resistance of an arranged marriage.

Barbie is about to get a new, bald friend. Mattel announced Tuesday that the company would be creating a hairless doll to help kids dealing with hair loss. The new doll will have wigs, hats, and scarves to accessorize. The company won’t sell the doll, but instead will donate them to children’s hospitals and other medical centers around the world. The decision follows a Facebook campaign aimed at getting Mattel to help children who are either losing their hair or watching a loved one go through the process.

Next month, inspiring women leaders and activists from around the globe—including Nobel winner Leymah Gbowee, Angelina Jolie, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, Meryl Streep, Madeleine Albright, IMF chief Christine Lagarde, California Attorney General Kamala Harris, Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni, The New York Times’s Jill Abramson, president of Kosovo Atifete Jahjaga, Nancy Pelosi, and many more—will convene in New York City for Newsweek and The Daily Beast's third annual Women in the World Summit. Housed at Lincoln Center, the three-day event will spotlight the urgent challenges facing women today. From a Pakistani bride who fled the prospect of a cruel enforced marriage to crusade for marital rights to soap-opera writers transforming sexist societies; from female powerhouses in national security to the Egyptian blogger who’s covered a year of dashed hopes and turmoil for the women of Tahrir Square, the summit showcases women who are battling the status quo, picking up the pieces in the aftermath of war and shattering glass ceilings. The event will also feature performances by the star of Broadway’s Evita revival and a closing presentation by Oscar nominee Streep. Buy tickets and see our complete lineup of events.

The mother of one of the journalists slain in Syria said her daughter had been planning to leave the country but stayed an extra day to finish reporting a story “she felt was very important.” Rosemarie Colvin told Newsday that her daughter, Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin, was “totally dedicated to getting the story straight and getting it out.” Colvin and French photographer Rémi Ochlik were killed by shelling in Homs on Wednesday while two other journalists were wounded when rockets hit the house they were staying in. Very few foreign journalists have been allowed in Syria, and the Syrian government on Wednesday ordered all journalists who have “entered Syria illegally” to report to the nearest immigration center. Colvin and Ochlik had reportedly been smuggled into Syria.

GOP candidate Rick Santorum is really amping up his conservative credentials, making controversial remarks one after another in recent days. On CBS's Face the Nation Sunday, he said he believes some prenatal testing leads to more abortions. “A lot of prenatal tests are done to identify deformities in utero, and the customary procedure is to encourage abortions,” he said. “We know that 90 percent of Down syndrome children in America are aborted. So, to suggest, where does that come from?” Santorum made similar comments Saturday, and the issue is a favorite of his lately because President Obama’s health-care reform would cover such operations, though he stopped short of wanting a ban on all prenatal testing—just some.

An Iraqi-born mother is on trial for beating and burning her 19-year-old daughter because she refused to go along with an arranged marriage. Yusra Fahran, 50, has pleaded not guilty to aggravated assault, unlawful imprisonment, and resisting arrest. Fahran is accused of burning her daughter’s face and chest with a hot spoon while the victim’s sisters held her down. “I swear I didn’t hurt her, only slightly, just like any parent would do to their children,” Fahran told a judge on Wednesday. The victim’s father, Mohammed Altameemi, and older sister are also on trial for the same charges and have pleaded not guilty to the crimes. Court records show that the burning incident occurred last November, but that the whole family has exhibited a pattern of repeated violence against the teen. Police say Altameemi admitted to trying to kill his daughter in February, cutting her neck with a knife, until her older sister intervened. Afterward, the mother and sisters allegedly taped the victim’s mouth, bound her hands and feet with rope before beating and burning her. She was reportedly taken to a hospital after having an epileptic seizure.

At the Whitney Houston funeral, ABC News reportst that Bobby Brown left the church and drove off with his son Landon and daughter LaPrincia in a black Cadillac Escalade. The highlight of the funeral so far is when Kevin Costner took the stage and elicited some laughs while cracking jokes about sneaking into church as a child and casting Whitney in The Bodyguard. He signed off saying "Off you go," and that when Whitney sings in front of God she shouldn't worry because she'll be "good enough." After a visibly emotional Alicia Keys sang, Mentor Clive Davis said of Whitney, "You wait for a voice like that for a lifetime." Though it’s a private invitation-only funeral, is being livestreamed across the globe Saturday from the New Hope Baptist Church, Houston’s childhood church. Aretha Franklin is no longer singing during the service due to a sudden illness.

Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Friday vetoed a bill to legalize gay marriage three days after the state Senate passed it and the state Assembly affirmed the vote, 41 to 33. While gay marriage has been a top priority among state Democrats this year, they don’t have the votes in the legislature to override a veto. New Jersey's gay-marriage proposal was one of several in the works. In Washington state, a bill legalizing same-sex marriage was signed into law by the governor Monday, and a similar initiative is working its way through Maryland’s statehouse.

Another vote, another win for gay rights—this time in Maryland where the House of Delegates voted to approve gay marriage. The measure passed by a thin margin—71 to 67—and now heads to the Maryland State Senate, which is expected to approve the legislation. A similar bill failed to gain enough votes in the House last year. Gov. Martin O’Malley, a strong proponent of gay marriage, lobbied for the bill this week and will approve it once it passes the upper chamber. The news comes on the heels of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie vetoing a same-sex marriage bill in the Garden State.

President Obama has backed down from a fight over requiring all employers to provide birth control for women free of charge. Obama announced a compromise Friday at the White House, saying that under his health-care plan, religiously affiliated employers will not have to pay for contraception. Churches and houses of worship were already exempt from this provision, but Roman Catholic groups and Republican leaders had accused Obama of violating religious freedom. Women will still be able to receive coverage free of charge, but schools, charities, universities, and hospitals will now be exempt, as people can go to insurance companies directly. Timothy Dolan, the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, called the compromise a "first step in the right direction" in revising "how individuals obtain services that are morally objectionable."

Women in the U.S. armed forces have some new job opportunities: the Pentagon is relaxing its restrictions on women in combat to allow females to serve in non-infantry battalion jobs. The positions put women closer to the action in positions like radio operators, intelligence analysts, medics, and tank mechanics, but they will still be barred from front-line infantry and special ops forces. The change is expected to open up about 14,000 jobs to female soldiers. The change came as a result of a Pentagon study of women in combat.

A landmark law passed Wednesday night in Libya’s National Transitional Council that guarantees women at least 40 seats on the new 200-member Constituent Assembly—a 20-percent representation. That’s better than the current U.S. Congress, which has 93 women in 541 seats—a 17-percent representation. The initial law would have guaranteed 10 percent of seats to women, but the provision was later dropped to favor the final version, which requires parties to allocate 40 seats to women in the assembly. (Parties name 80 of the 200 seats in the parliament.) The assembly, once put in place, will draft the country’s new constitution.

A New York-based human-rights group is going to bat for women in Saudi Arabia who are banned from participating in the Olympics. In a report released Wednesday, Human Rights Watch called on the International Olympic Committee to crack down on Saudi Arabia’s national Olympic committee unless it enacted major sports reforms for women. The advocacy group said the Saudi committee should be disqualified from this summer’s London Olympics if it fails to include a female athlete, and that condemned its “effective ban” on women competing at a national level as systematic discrimination. Speaking with The New York Times about the report, a senior Middle East researcher at Human Rights Watch called Saudi Arabia “a black eye to the sporting committee.” Saudi Arabia is one of three Olympic nations that has never sent a woman to the Games. The other two are Qatar and Brunei, though they have sent female athletes to other sports competitions like the Islamic women’s Games and the Asian Games.

Bad publicity for one group, good for another. Planned Parenthood has raised $3 million since the controversy over Susan G. Komen foundation's pulling its funding—a decision that was reversed on Friday. The Komen foundation still says its actions were not political, though Planned Parenthood’s president Cecile Richards said Friday that the lesson from this is that politics shouldn’t get in the way.

Oh, so that's what you meant. Rick Santorum attempted to clarify yet another controversial remark he made Thursday on CNN, this time saying that he had "concerns" about women serving in combat because of "other types of emotions that are involved," after the Pentagon announced that frontline roles will be available to both sexes. "I think that can be a very compromising situation, where people naturally may do things that may not be in the interests of the mission," he told John King on Thursday, leading many to perceive that he believes women are too emotional. On NBC's Today show, Santorum said he was referring to the emotions of men, not women. "I think men have the emotions when you see a woman in harm’s way," he said, and that there would be a "natural inclination to not focus on the mission but to try to be in a position where you might want to protect someone." Not sure if that explanation is any better.

The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation issued a statement Friday apologizing for pulling funding from Planned Parenthood—and pledged to continue funding existing grants with Planned Parenthood. The move came at the end of a tumultuous week for the Komen Foundation, which had faced furious backlash after announcing earlier this week that they would pull their funding for cancer screening from Planned Parenthood—a decision that many suspected was because of abortion politics. Komen denied the link to politics and instead linked it to a recent congressional investigation of Planned Parenthood, but in Friday’s statement, the charity said they “amend our criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political.” In the 24 hours after Komen’s decision on Tuesday, Planned Parenthood received a spike in donations that nearly made up for the loss of funds from the charity.

An Afghan immigrant family in Canada has been found guilty of killing four female members of the family in a crime that the judge called “cold-blooded, shameful murders.” Mohammad Shafia was sentenced Sunday to life in prison for killing his three teenage daughters—Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13—and his first wife, Rona Amir, 52. A jury in Kingston, Ontario, also found his second wife, Tooba Yahya, 42, and their son Hamed, 21, guilty of four counts of first-degree murder. They declared their innocence after the verdict was read, but the judge said the crime resulted from “a twisted concept of honor.” The victims’ bodies were found in 2009 in a car submerged in a canal in Kingston. Shafia was secretly taped saying his daughters were a “disgrace” for dating boys and wearing inappropriate clothes.

Birth-control users, beware:  Pfizer, the world’s leading drug company, recalled 1 million packs of birth-control pills in the U.S. after discovering that they might not prevent pregnancy. The company recalled 14 lots of three different generic brands—Lo/Ovral-28, Norgestrel, and Ethinyl Estradiol—after an investigation found some packs might contain incorrect daily dosages. In a statement on Thursday, the company said that the pills posed no health risks to women but nonetheless urged consumers to “begin using a non-hormonal form of contraception immediately.”

It’s not the first time she’s said she’s getting out of politics after her current job, but Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made it clear Thursday that she’s ready to call it quits. In a meeting with State Department employees, Clinton said she’s tuckered out after 20 years on “the high wire of American politics.” She said she will finish her term and, if President Obama wins re-election in November, will serve with him until he finds a replacement. She hasn’t been following the election season or the GOP debates, which she acknowledged was “a little odd” for her. But after being first lady, senator, an aspiring presidential candidate and finally Secretary of State, Clinton said “it would probably be a good idea just to find out how tired I am.”

Bloggers are stripping down in a show of support for Golshifteh Farahani, an actress who’s reportedly been barred from returning to her home country of Iran. The 28-year-old actress, who starred in the 2008 film Body of Lies, was reportedly exiled because she appeared topless and with her hands over her breasts in a photo for Madame le Figaro, a French magazine. Now her fans have taken to posting their own nude portraits on the Internet. Farahani has said her decision to pose for the magazine photo was in protest of restrictions on how Iranian women are allowed to appear in public.

Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords officially resigned from the House of Representatives Wednesday as her colleagues marked her departure with emotional speeches and well wishes. Giffords, who was injured in a shooting in Tucson in January 2011 that killed six people, is leaving her seat to focus on her recovery. The House minority leader, fellow Democrat Nancy Pelosi, called Gifford the “brightest star” in Congress who had “brought the word 'dignity' to new heights by her courage.” Majority Leader Eric Cantor added, "Though Gabby may be leaving Washington today, I know this won't be the last we see of her and Mark.” As a final tribute, the House unanimously passed a bill championed by Giffords that deals with smuggling on the Mexican border.

To register for this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, delegates had to fill in a profile page that is preset with the silhouette of a shadowy man. A year after imposing a quota on the biggest companies to encourage more women to attend, that image still fits the gender profile of more than 80 percent of delegates. Despite the quota, just 17 percent of those gathered from the world’s business and political elites are women. This is the highest yet in the 40-odd years of the event, up from 16 percent in 2011—and just 9 percent in 2002. But it still gives a useful guide to the headway women are making at the top. I’ve been to Davos once before when I tackled the late nights and icy roads while five months pregnant. I thought once was enough. But five years on, I am back, wanting to find out how much has changed. Saadia Zahidi, the head of constituents at WEF who has spearheaded the program of increasing diversity, says it has actively sought out women for panels (some 20 percent of all panelists are women), made the issue of gender the subject of more sessions and added a gender lens to general discussions on the economy or health. Her group was also responsible for the introduction of a quota for “strategic partners”—the top 100 companies attending the mountainside event—which dictates that one in every five passes has to be a woman. A fifth of them decided to send just four people.

Jean-Claude Mas, the head of the defunct Poly Implant Prothese, has a lot to answer for. He was arrested before dawn in France Thursday in connection with his company's use of industrial-grade silicone in tens of thousands of breast implants. The implants have become an international health scandal, with authorities struggling to settle on the proper response. German, Czech and French authorities say the implants should be removed, but Britain says there's not enough evidence that they're dangerous. Brazil says its government will fine insurance companies that refuse to pay for their removal.

It’s been nearly 10 years since she was kidnapped, but Elizabeth Smart is still making headlines. A spokesman confirmed Friday that Smart, 24, is engaged to be married later this year, though no details about the groom have been revealed. After her rescue in 2003, Smart displayed little psychological trauma and was quick to restore her life to normalcy. She has served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in France, formed a foundation dedicated to child advocacy, and worked as a commentator for ABC News. She is nonetheless wary of her personal life being too exposed to the public, which explains the mystery of the groom. “She has planned to be very public in her child advocacy work, but wants to keep the details of her personal life private,” her spokesman said.

The blogosphere is buzzing over a New York Times story on New York state Senate hopeful Marc Cenedella, the founder of job-search site TheLadders.com. It seems that postings on a company blog featuring his name and photo may come back to haunt him. The blog, called “The Personal Blog of Marc Cenedella,” contained advice on polishing résumés and preparing for job interviews, but also contained random entries about sex, drugs, and women, with headlines like “Sexy vs. Skanky” and “Dating Advice for Girly Girls.” The site has recently been disabled, and Cenedella’s company said the page was not a personal blog but a “maintenance staging site” and that the “staging site contained testing content from a wide variety of sources, including spam from automatic spiders.”

This girl's going places in life. Laura Dekker, 16, sailed into St. Maarten harbor on Saturday, completing a 27,000 mile round-the-world voyage in a 38-foot yacht called "Guppy". The dutch teen broke an unofficial record set in 2010 by Australian teenager Jessica Watson. Dekker turned 16 during the trip, but she won't garner any recognition for her groundbreaking voyage from The Guinness World Records, which doesn't acknowledge records for "youngest" sailors. Dekker, who claims she was born on a boat and started dreaming about circumnavigating the globe when she was ten, caused a controversy amongst the Dutch government several years ago when she announced plans for her journey. Dutch officials tried to interfere, claiming she was too young, while educational authorities complained she should be in school.

Ken, they're coming for you next. Iranian police have confiscated Barbie dolls and shut down dozens of toy stores for selling them, the semiofficial Mehr news agency reported Friday. Mehr quoted an unnamed police official who said this marks a "new phase" in the country's crackdown against "manifestations of Western culture." Iran has banned the sale of Barbie dolls since the mid-1990s, but the last campaign to stamp them out was in 2002. In 2008, the government again warned against the "destructive" consequences of Barbie dolls.

One year ago on Jan. 8, Jared Loughner stormed into a crowd in Tucson, Ariz., and opened fire, killing six people and shooting Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in the head. Giffords, who has since partially recovered in remarkable fashion, and her husband Mark Kelly visited the Safeway market which was where the shooting took place and the hospital she was rushed to for treatment. At 10:11 a.m. (the exact time Giffords was shot in the head), bells were rung 19 times, symbolizing the 19 people who were killed or wounded by the attack. Giffords then attended a candlelight vigil at the University of Arizona on Sunday night, where she led a crowd of 1,000 people in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Newt Gingrich's two daughters (from his first marriage) are defending their father from charges that he asked his second wife for an open marriage. "He said it's simply not true," Kathy Lubbers told ABC News, which aired Marianne Gingrich's interview on its Nightline program Thursday night, where she also revealed that the former speaker of the House started divorce proceedings shortly after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. "Dad tried very hard to make their marriage work, and unfortunately it didn't," Gingrich's other daughter, Jackie Cushman, said.

It's the first major revision to the definition of rape in more than 80 years. The Obama administration on Friday broadened the parameters of the crime—which had been undercounted for decades—to include more forms of sexual assaults. It now includes men as victims, oral or anal sex, and attacks which a victim cannot give consent because of the influence of drugs or alcohol, is under the age of consent, or mentally or physically incapable. Since 1927, forcible rape was defined as the carnal knowledge of a woman, forcibly and against her will, which only included penetration of a woman's vagina but excluded oral or anal penetration—and the rape of men.

Poet Emma Lazarus transformed the Statue of Liberty from a symbol of aggression to one of welcome, but a new exhibit showcasing her life shows that her poem “The New Colossus” is only a minor reason to appreciate her, writes Edward Rothstein in The New York Times. “In fact, so many illuminating sparks are set off by this show, mounted in celebration of the statue’s 125th anniversary, that its closing section about Lady Liberty comes as an anticlimax,” Rothstein writes. The exhibit, at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, unveils the fascinating story of how a fourth-generation American from New York's upper crust came to write so evocatively about “tired, huddled masses,” and how her vision of the country rewrote the statue's meaning.

It’s over: Michele Bachmann dropped her bid to be the Republican presidential nominee on Wednesday, one day after coming in sixth in the Iowa caucuses. “I look forward to the next chapter in God’s plan. He has one for each of us, you know,” she said at the press conference. A campaign source struck a more dour note to National Journal, saying Bachmann quit because she saw “no viable way forward.” She captured just 5 percent of votes in Iowa, dead last among those competing. Bachmann took some shots at President Obama's health-care initiative in her swan song, saying it was the reason she decided to run for president and she would continue her fight against it.

After years of uncomfortable moments for Saudi women being served by male salespeople in lingerie shops, a new law is allowing only women to work in the stores. Both men and women behind the initiative are hopeful it will end decades of awkwardness in the Islamic kingdom, where women have always had to buy their lingerie from male sales assistants. Female campaigners went so far as to boycott lingerie stores and launched a Facebook page pushing for the initiative. One woman told the BBC that she and any woman who could afford it would often shop abroad rather than go through the shameful process of telling a salesman her underwear size. Now more women are hoping to enter the workforce (traditionally, only educated elite women in the Islamic kingdom can pursue a career). The law could potentially create up to 40,000 jobs for less privileged Saudi women who never before had the opportunity to enter the workplace.

Grammy-winning recording artist Aretha Franklin was in a joking mood when she announced her engagement today, telling The Associated Press: “No, I’m not pregnant.” The 69-year-old soul singer, who has been married twice before, is marrying her longtime friend William “Willie” Wilkerson. The couple is considering a summer wedding in Miami Beach, Fla., with an exclusive reception aboard a private yacht and a gown designed by either Donna Karan, Valentino, or Vera Wang. The “Respect” singer’s first marriage to Ted White in 1961 lasted eight years. She then tied the knot with actor Glynn Turman in 1978, but they divorced six years later.

Afghan President Hmid Karzai has calling for an investigation into the torture of 15-year-old Sahar Gul, who was rescued from the basement of her in-laws' house last month. Sahar had been starved and brutally tortured for resisting prostitution. She said her 30-year-old husband and his family imprisoned and abused her for months. Karzai also ordered the arrest of those responsible.

Newt Gingrich’s ex-wife told ABC News that the Republican presidential candidate lacked the proper moral character to be president. In an interview that will air Thursday night on Nightline, Marianne Gingrich said her ex-husband had sought an “open marriage” when he admitted that he was having a six-year affair with his current wife, Callista. Marianne said Gingrich conducted his affair from “my bedroom in our apartment in Washington” during the time he led the impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton—a time when Marianne defended his ethics. She said Newt proceeded with the divorce only months after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, when a doctor had advised she not have any stress. At the time of the divorce, Marianne said Gingrich told her that Callista was “going to help him become president.”

It was Garbriella Sicard’s dream to be a worldwide trend on Twitter, according to friends of the late Penn State student, who died on Wednesday at age 19 after a car crash. By early Friday morning, #FlyHighGaby was the No. 1 global trend. Sicard’s friends started tweeting the hashtag in her honor on Thursday to celebrities like Snooki and Taylor Swift, and the trend immediately went viral in the U.S. and then around the world. Sicard, who died in the hospital following the crash, was a liberal-arts major and played club lacrosse at Penn State.

Afghan police rescued a 15-year-old girl from her husband’s basement, where she had been imprisoned and tortured for several months. Police say Sahar Gul had her nails and hair pulled out, and chunks of flesh cut out with pliers. The girl was married to a 30-year-old man seven months ago, when she was 14 years old. Her parents called the police after they’d been unable to contact her for several months. Police arrested Gul’s in-laws, who she says participated in her torture, but her husband had already fled.

An Egyptian court on Tuesday banned virginity tests for female detainees, months after women arrested in a March rally on Tahrir Square alleged they were forced to take the examinations. Samira Ibrahim, 25, took the military-led government to court in August, alleging that she was forcibly subjected to a virginity test in March—and since then she claims she has received death threats after bringing the case. “I will not give up my rights as a woman or a human being,” Ibrahim said. Although Egyptian authorities originally denied issuing the tests, at least one senior official has admitted the practice exists.

An 8-year-old Orthodox Jewish girl has been the new focal point of a religious war in Israel after being harassed by a group of ultra-Orthodox extremists while she walked to school. Naama Margolese is now afraid to walk to school after being spat on by the extremists, who also called her a “whore” for dressing what they considered immodestly. Margolese attends a girls’ school in Beit Shemesh, to the west of Jerusalem, a city that has struggled with its ultra-Orthodox residents and their new neighbors of modern Orthodox Jews, many of whom emigrated from the U.S. Many of the ultra-Orthodox residents feel the school is an encroachment on their territory, and have put up street signs in the community calling for the separation of sexes on the sidewalks and have dispatched “modesty patrols” to enforce a chaste dress code for girls. Black-hatted men reportedly accost and jeer students almost daily.

You can thank your regulators for a change: the FDA expressed concern about defective French implants in 2000, a full 10 years before European regulators began to worry. The FDA sent an inspector to the implants’ manufacturer, Poly Implant Prothese, and then sent its founder a letter saying the implants were “adulterated” and listing at least 11 problems with the manufacturing process. PIP, it turns out, was using computer-grade silicone in the implants. Thousands of European women have received them, and the French government has recommended that its citizens have them removed due to their high rupture rate.

The Iranian woman whose sentence of stoning for adultery provoked an international outcry could be hanged instead. The head of the judiciary in East Azerbaijan has said the prison does not have the facilities to stone Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani. So he is investigating whether it is legally and religiously permissible to hang her. Her sentence was originally postponed last year after international protests.

It’s shorter than a Kardashian marriage. Sinead O’Connor announced Tuesday that she was ending her marriage—18 days after it started. O’Connor wed singer Barry Herridge in Las Vegas on Dec. 8, and O’Connor said that “within three hours” the marriage was “kyboshed by the behavior of certain people in my husband’s life.” O’Connor wrote that Herridge was “enormously wounded” by the comments, and she said it “became apparent” to her that she had to end the marriage because it had “become too much for him to bear.” O’Connor has been married three times before and has four children from previous relationships.

In war-torn Somalia, an alarming increase in gang rapes of women and girls at the hands of radical Islamic militants has created a climate of fear throughout the country. Ravaged by unceasing combat and a nationwide famine, Somalis are now facing a sexual-abuse epidemic. According to U.N. officials, the Shabab militants are raping girls and women, forcing arranged marriages, and taking women as sex slaves to pay their militiamen. Aid workers and victims say that armed and even government soldiers are also pillaging overcrowded refugee camps, raping and killing their victims. Fartuun Adan, who runs Somalia’s Elman Peace and Human Rights Center, says many women are afraid of telling their stories. “There’s no justice here, no protection.”

A new CNN report based on court documents indicates that Newt Gingrich’s first wife, Jackie Battley, did not want a divorce, which goes against his campaign’s earlier claim that she sought the divorce. The court papers read, “Defendant shows that she has adequate and ample grounds for divorce, but that she does not desire one at this time.” In 1985, Battley told a newspaper that the divorce, “came as a complete surprise.” But on Gingrich’s campaign website claims, “It was (Jackie Battley) that requested the divorce, not Newt.” CNN also interviewed a former associate of Gingrich, who claimed that Gingrich said of Battley, “You know and I know that she’s not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of a president.”

The girl who cried “campaign!” is at it again. Not one to relinquish the spotlight easily, Sarah Palin insisted Tuesday—despite already saying she wouldn’t run for president in 2012—that “it’s not too late” to enter the race. However, it probably is too late. When asked on Fox’s Follow the Money whether she’d still consider running, the former vice presidential nominee said, “Who knows what will happen in the future.”

Taylor Swift may have long eyelashes, but they’re not nearly as long as they look in an ad for CoverGirl’s Nature Luxe Mousse Mascara. After reading the fine print at the bottom of the advertisement, which explains that Swift’s lashes were “enhanced in post-production,” The National Advertising Division ruled that it was misleading. Proctor & Gamble, which owns Covergirl, has since announced that it has withdrawn the ad. Lawyers working on the case argued that since the photo is essentially a product demonstration, it misleads potential buyers. “This isn’t a question of airbrushing,” said the director of the National Advertising Division. “It’s a question of actually demonstrating what your lashes will look like when you use this product.” This ruling marks the first time that NAD has gone after a beauty company.