[Vientiane, Laos; December 14. Image via Getty]

Vu Thuy Linh of Vietnam competes in Wushu's women nangquan at the 25th Southeast Asian Games (SEAGAMES) being held in Vientiane on December 14, 2009. AFP PHOTO/HOANG DINH Nam (Photo credit should read HOANG DINH NAM/AFP/Getty Images)

[Vientiane, Laos; December 2. Image via Getty]

A Vietnamese female fan attends a football match between Vietnam and Thailand at the 25th Southeast Asian Games (SEAGAMES) in Vientiane on December 2, 2009. The match ended 1-1. AFP PHOTO (Photo credit should read AFP/AFP/Getty Images)

[Le Thuy, Vietnam; October 2. Image via Getty]

A cyclist and her daughter ride next to a completely submerged rice field along the North-South national highway number one in district of Le Thuy in the central Vietnamese province of Quang Binh following the passing of Typhoon Ketsana on October 2, 2009. The death toll in Vietnam from Typhoon Ketsana rose to 99 making it one of the worst disasters to hit the country in recent years. AFP PHOTO/HOANG DINH Nam (Photo credit should read HOANG DINH NAM/AFP/Getty Images)

• Despite earlier reports, Cheyvonne Molino, a woman who knows Garrido and the girls says they never acted robotically and didn't wear prairie dresses. • President Obama and Megan Fox are both experts at packaging sound-bites according to The Huffington Post because they each have made similar statements in different interviews. Yesterday when asked about claims that those who dislike him are racist, Obama told both George Stephanopoulos and John King basically, "Are there some people who don't like me because of my race? I'm sure there are." In a Rolling Stone interview Fox talked about her "powerful, confident vagina," and she told Cosmopolitan, "Women hold the power because we have the vaginas. If you're in a heterosexual relationship and you're a female, you win." Maybe their respective thoughts on racism and vaginas are just very consistent. • Between 14 and 23 percent of pregnant women experience a depressive disorder during pregnancy and 13 percent took anti-depressants in 2003. According to a new study short-term neonatal irritability and neurobehavioral changes were linked to maternal depression and anti-depressant treatment. • In the video at the link, a local Florida station, reports that parents are complaining about billboards in 16 cities that say "sex without consent is rape" that are paid for with federal tax money because the ads force them to discuss sexual violence with their children. • Many skin care products and cosmetics contain alcohol and pork products. Aside from being gross, this means Muslim women who keep Halal can't use them. After converting to Islam and finding few cosmetics options for Muslim women, a former makeup created OnePure, a cosmetics line approved and certified by the Malaysian Islamic Authority. • An AP investigation found that baby formula companies are aggressively promoting formula over breast-feeding in Vietnam. Formula companies have paid doctors to push their products and advertised formula for babies between six and 12 months even though Vietnam's law prohibits advertising formula for children under age one. • In a New York Times profile, Beth Kaplan, the president of GNC says, "I need to be part of a big organization, and my kids get it. I was at Bath & Body Works when my father died, and I struggled with being away from home. I resigned and thought my boys would be thrilled. My younger son, who was 8, was so excited that he jumped into my arms. My older son said, 'But Mommy, I really liked that job.'" • Sixty-eight of the 72 known people 110 and older are female, even though there are more boys than girls born each year. Part of the reason may be that men are five times more likely than women to die by firearms, men are more susceptible to fatal conditions like cancer and heart disease, and men are more likely to ignore emotional problems and are nine times more likely to commit suicide between the ages of 75 and 79. • According to government estimates more than 16 million Japanese women, or one quarter of the country's female population, are 65 or older. The country is anticipating a shortage of workers as the population ages. • The Australian Fair Work Ombusdman's office has found that women are being fired for taking maternity leave and being told to quit if they can't juggle work and family. In one case, a woman saw her position being advertised in the newspaper eight months into her maternity leave and was told she couldn't come back. In another case a woman's boss shifted her from five eight-hour days to four 10-hour days so she couldn't drop her kids off at day care, and told her to quit if she didn't like it. • The Pasco, Washington planning commission voted down a proposal to allow a Planned Parenthood in town because they say it would attract too many protesters. Anna Franks, president of Planned Parenthood of Central Washington says the decision was political: "What we have here are protesters protesting against Planned Parenthood that there may be protesters at our clinic." The county has one of the highest teen pregnancy and STD rates in the state. •

Kim Phuc Pan Thai was only nine when she suffered burns on most of her body from a napalm attack. "I should be dead," she told a conference of burn survivors and burn care specialists, HealthDay reports. "Sixty-five percent of my body got burned." The third-degree burns that covered her back and left arm fortunately left her face untouched, but resulted in a mass of permanent scars and recurring pain. Phuc had to undergo many skin grafts, taken mostly from her legs, in a total of 17 operations. "But I was spared," she said.

She was also saved, brought from the streets of Trang Bang to a hospital in the American-funded Barsky Hospital in Saigon by the same man who immortalized her suffering, Associated Press photographer Nick Ut. Like Phuc, Ut's life was irreversibly altered on that day in 1972. Still at work with the Associated Press (snapping pictures of Paris Hilton and the like), he believes his photograph of Phuc is the best he will ever take. "It's a strange feeling... I know I will never take another photograph that's as good as this - not as long as I live."

Phuc says she remembers the events of June 8th, 1972, like it was yesterday. Phuc was hiding in the village temple grounds when she heard the sound of bombs. "After I saw the fire everywhere around me," Phuc said. "I was so scared. And all my clothes just burned off by the fire. And I saw all my burns. And people screaming: 'Nong qua! Nong qua!' 'Too hot! Too hot!'"

Phuc is now 46. She is a public speaker, peace activist, United Nations Goodwill Ambassador, child welfare advocate, and married mother of two. She still suffers pain from the damaged nerves on her arm and back. But she says she considers the pain "protection. It humbles me, and helps me never to take my life for granted, and to share my story."

Girl In Iconic Vietnam War Photo Brings Message Of Hope [HealthDay]

Earlier: Paris Hilton: The Kim Phuc of 2007, Kim Phuc Photographer Nick Ut: "I Suppose The Big Difference Is That... Frankly, I Don't Give A Damn About Paris Hilton"

• And to make it even better, his tagline is "What? I like variety," which is an odd choice for the man notorious for sticking to his "type." Related: Hugh is finally getting a divorce. • The Australian government has announced plans to widen protection for women fleeing their home countries out of fear for possible genital mutilation and honor killings. Women at risk will now be covered by the "Refugees Convention." • Four women from Wisconsin have been charged with being party to felony false imprisonment after they held a 37-year-old man captive and super-glued his penis to his stomach as a twisted punishment for his philandering ways. The woman who did the gluing, Therese Ziemann, is also charged with misdemeanor fourth-degree sexual assault. • An increase in availability of sex-determination and sex-selection technology has lead to a huge disparity between the number of male and female babies born in Vietnam (112.1 male babies per 100 female babies). The U.N. says they fear the widening gap may lead to a greater demand for sex work, and increased gender-based violence. • Iranian video artist Shirin Neshat has premiered her first feature film about women's rights in 1953 Iran, titled "Women Without Men" at the Venice film festival. Neshat says that much of the material she explores in the film can be applied to the situation today in Iran. • Michelle Obama has given her support to a request from the Freshfarm Markets to close a section of Vermont Avenue for a weekly farmers' market. If the request goes through, the busy street would be blocked off every Thursday between 1 p.m. and 8 p.m. • 16-year-old Jessica Watson had hoped to become the youngest person to sail around the world, but just days before she was about to sail, she crashed her boat, the Pink Lady, into a 63,000-ton cargo carrier of the coast of Australia. • Lynndie England is suing writer Gary S. Winkler for seizing control of her biography, which she had hoped would help salvage her image. The book, Tortured: Lynndie England, Abu Ghraib and the Photographs That Shocked the World, is apparently not selling very well. "Nobody's getting rich here. I'm in the hole," said Winkler. • A Portuguese judge has banned further sales of a book written by a former policeman on the grounds that it hampers the search for Madeleine McCann. The book in question claims that McCann, who has been missing since May 2007, is dead. • In attempts to change his reputation as a "closed, brutal dictator," Iranian President Mahoud Ahmadinejad has already appointed one woman to his cabinet and is pushing for a second. However, women's rights activists recognize that the women appointed will probably not further their cause. "These women that Mr. Ahmadinejad selected are anti-woman," said Aida Qajar. • Attorneys for NFL player Ben Roethlisberger have rejected a "bizarre" offer to settle a lawsuit accusing Roethlisberger of rape. The so-called "bizarre" deal asks that the quarterback admit he raped Andrea McNulty and donate $100,000 to a women's advocacy group. Roethlisberger's lawyers claim her proposal "insults women who have legitimately suffered from sexual misconduct." Say what? • A panel of medical experts have voted to approve HPV vaccine Cervarix. The FDA will review the application and make a decision by September 29th. • According to a recent survey, one in every 33 women who regularly attend religious services has been the target of sexual advances by religious leader. • The Australian government said Wednesday that they are willing to allow women to serve in frontline combat units. American women are currently barred from combat roles. However, according to this article (and photograph) Australian women already serve on the frontline. • A British coroner failed to determine whether the LighterLife diet contributed to the death of 34-year-old bride-to-be Samantha Clowe. • IAAF spokesman Nick Davies said on Tuesday that even if Caster Semenya's gender tests show that she has had an "unfair advantage" due to a medical condition, she will most likely get to keep her gold medal. "This is not a doping case at present so it shouldn't be considered as one where you have a retroactive stripping of results," he explained. •

[Hanoi, July 27. Image via Getty]

A woman sits praying in front of a grave at an official cemetery in Hanoi to mark the national 'Day for War Martyrs and Invalids' on July 27, 2009. Families and officials have been paying visits to official cemeteries throughout the country. AFP PHOTO / HOANG DINH Nam (Photo credit should read HOANG DINH NAM/AFP/Getty Images)

• Saberi said she was moved to hear that so many people worked for her release. She added, "I think that if somebody is supposed to speak about my case from now on, nobody knows about it as well as I do, and I will talk about it more in the future." • Tennessee has nullified the 18-month marriage of a transgender woman and a man because the state considers them both men. The woman was born a man and had a sex change operation, but the state does not recognize gender change (or gay marriage) even after sex reassignment surgery. • A Sacramento woman survived a car crash because she was hurled out of the car, over the the highway sound wall, and landed in a plum tree in a backyard. Firefighters say she survived because the tree cushioned her fall. • A Turkish court has ordered that an employer give a woman her job back after she was fired for kissing her boyfriend at work. The kiss was brief, and no customers say it, but her boss caught it on a security camera and fired her. • The banning of four books of French erotic literature in Turkey has caused debate over the qualifications of committee members to determine what is literature and what isn't after they decided to ban a book by the acclaimed French poet Apollinaire. • A new study suggests chemicals and hormones produced from our changing moods can affect eggs and sperm, altering the patterns of genes that are active in them and thus how a child develops. • Scientists have found that by observing the pattern of activity in the brain they can tell whether a person heard words spoken in anger, joy, relief, or sadness. This is the first study to show that emotional information is represented by distinct spatial signatures in the brain. • Scientists in Australia have figured out why there is an obesity epidemic: we eat too much food. They calculated how much people are eating today as opposed to three decades ago by comparing agricultural data. They determined that based on the total amount of food that is grown and imported, humans are actually less fat than we should be based just on changes in consumption, which may be explained by exercise. • A McDonald's in Alabama pulled Kidz Bop CDs from the store's Happy Meals because parents complained they could hear an obscenity in a cover of Gavin DeGraw's "I Don't Wanna Be." McDonald's says there's no obscenity in the song, but a parent says, "In the song the word is supposed to be 'looking,' but they're saying the f-word with the -ing on the end." • A stripper working at a Times Square peep show caught an ex-con who was counterfeiting money. She noticed that the two $10 bills he handed her looked like they were made on an Ink Jet printer and alerted her manager. When confronted, the man panicked and dropped 21 more bills. The man was arrested and is currently out on bail. • A British man was arrested after he drove up to a police officer posing as a prostitute and how much she would charge to have sex with his 14-year-old son, who was sitting in the car. The man won't serve jail time because of his "previous excellent character" and the boy will be allowed to live with his father, but the man will be put on the sex offender registry for five years. • A study found that in many police units in England and Wales female officers have to wear uniforms and stab vests designed for men. Maria Eagle, the justice minister, said, "It does make a very clear point, doesn't it? How welcome would you feel as a woman in a police force like that, if you can't even get clothes that fit you? It's crazy." • Police are investigating whether a Russian gynecologist, Igor Ivanov, purposely sterilized his pregnant ex-fiance, Olga Sokolova, when she was admitted to a hospital with abdominal pains. Sokolova had called off their wedding on the night before they were supposed to get married because she believed he was cheating on her. She started dating someone else and got pregnant. Ivanov was the only doctor on duty when she was admitted to the hospital, and he told her she was miscarrying and performed emergency surgery, causing serious internal damage that will prevent her from having children. • On Saturday Sister Mary Elizabeth Lloyd will run a 100-mile marathon in Florida while wearing her nun's habit to raise money to help orphaned children. ''I'm like Johnny Cash,'' Lloyd said. 'I wear black to draw attention. And when people ask me: 'Why in God's name are you doing this?' I can say, 'For the orphaned children.''' • A video posted by the U.K. National Health Service in Leicester was banned by YouTube after 24 hours for showing what looks like a teenage girl giving birth on a playground while students watch. The NHS was trying to get their anti-teen pregnancy message to young people with a viral video. • Business is booming at Cryos, the world's biggest sperm bank. In 2008 the number of donors tripled, from 30 a day to 100 at its four offices in Denmark. The worldwide demand for sperm surged in the past three or four years and Cryos "can't meet the avalanche of demand from the western world, in particular the United States," said Chief executive Ole Schou, "We help a tsunami of highly-educated single women who are more demanding and who prioritised their careers and who want to have a child before it is too late." • Vietnam is experiencing a boom in male births, which researchers believe can be blamed on the tenfold increase in the availability of ultrasounds in the last decade. They believe women being able to know the sex of their unborn child is increasing the number of sex-specific abortions. • A scientist who writes under the name "Mike The Mad Biologist" blogged that he perceives a double standard in how female scientists are viewed when they party after work. "If a female scientist at a meeting parties hard and flirts, she is viewed as a 'party girl.' In other words, she is no longer viewed as a scientist with an interesting social life, but as 'a good time' (although perhaps not sexually)," he writes, adding, "Mind you, I think this double standard sucks. But... I'm not sure what we (including male scientists) can do about it, other than not be assholes (which would be a good start)." • Here's a letter to the Princeton Alumni Weekly from an alum of 1945: "Gone is the distinct masculine flavor of an all-male college. The maleness of the Nassau Inn's Tap Room has been replaced by a female, dainty, tearoom atmosphere... My fear is that the Princeton University I knew has been taken over by a female majority (for better or worse). I am surprised that other male graduates are not upset by these developments." • English ice cream maker Frank Frederick is reviving his Italian family's 100-year-old gelato brand, along with his grandfather's practice of singing opera to his cows to make them produce endorphin-rich milk. Frederick flew in opera tenor Marcello Bedoni from Italy to serenade his cows. "The cows are such gentle beasts and have a good ear for opera," said Bedoni. •

[Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam; May 5. Image via Getty]

A Thai ethnic girl invites visitors to buy a Thai traditional 'pieu' scarf at the entrance to the site of the former French army's stronghold 'Eliane 2' in Dien Bien Phu on May 05, 2009. The northwestern battlefield-turned city is to celebrate on May 07, 2009 the 55th anniversary of Vietnam's victory over France at Dien Bien Phu. AFP PHOTO/HOANG DINH Nam (Photo credit should read HOANG DINH NAM/AFP/Getty Images)

Worse, though, is the expectation among both men and some Egyptian women that women are asked to be harassed by their manner of dress. According to the survey, 83 percent of Egyptian women and 98 percent of foreign women admitted to having been sexually harassed, though less than 3 percent of the harassed Egyptian women ever reported it. And, although it likely goes without saying, most of the Egyptian women who were harassed were wearing headscarves or clothes they deemed modest because, when it comes to street harassment, it isn't ever really about what a woman is wearing, it's always about a man trying to assert himself and intimidate her.

I mean, though, let's be frank, this isn't new and it certainly isn't limited to Egypt. I've been hollered at everywhere from my hometown to Vietnam; I was groped in the high school hallway, in clubs in D.C. and in the halls of Congress. My European friends warned me about traveling alone in Italy and I've been followed home in Spain. My sister's suburban New Jersey college had a serial masturbator dubbed the "Mad Wanker" who used to wait for girls to walk by at night and then shine a flashlight on his less-than-impressive junk. So before we call it cultural, or even limited to Egypt, why don't we just say: who among us hasn't experienced this, regardless of our country of origin? And is there some system by which we can tag the men that do it with tracking devices, so we know who to avoid and/or mace?

Two-Thirds Of Egyptian Men Harass Women? [Reuters]

See those flyaways? Someone needs Frizz-Ease. Dress, $818, Lorena Calma.

Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.
Vest, $338, top, $208, skirt, $218, BCBG MaxAzria Runway; belt, $178, BCBG MaxAzria.

Dress, $2,460, Bottega Veneta. Flight from New York City to Ho Chi Min City via Kayak.com, $1,172.

Someone's got her eye on that bicycle, because someone's shoes hurt so bad she needs to sit down. Also, someone wishes this shoot were on the beach in Thailand instead.

If you look very very very closely you can see the aforementioned Donna Karan Collection skirt, a bargain at $1,895. The top is $595, the belt is $695, also from Donna Karan collection. You can get a custom-made silk dress in Saigon for around $65.

Spring has sprung, why are you so glum? Depressing. Beautiful, but depressing.

"This Zac Posen dress is price upon request, which means you can't afford it," she whispered, as she contemplated plunging into the unforgiving waves.

Earlier: Marie Claire's Oh-So-Realistic Trailer Park Photo Shoot
Marie Claire & The 75-Year-Old Bhutanese Model
'Marie Claire' Editors Went To Italy And All They Got Was This Awesome Photo Shoot

For those interested in coincidences, the pictures were taken exactly 35 years apart.

**Update: We're being informed that top photo of Paris was taken not by Nick Ut but by Carl Larson of INF; Nick Ut of the Associated Press is responsible for the below:

Maybe Al Has A Point [Andrew Sullivan]
Related: Nick Ut Recalls The Events of June 8, 1972