• Albania may soon become the first country in southeastern Europe to legalize same-sex marriage. According to the Albanian Daily News, the Albanian parliament has plans to consider a draft bill that would allow gay couples to legally wed. • Women from China are being included, for the first time, in an international study on the effects of radiotherapy on women who have had mastectomies. The study will examine 3,700 breast cancer patients from Europe, Australia, Singapore, China and Japan. • In 2008, novelist Masha Hamilton created the Afghan Women's Writing Project, which links writing teachers from the U.S. to students in Afghanistan. The women work in both prose and poetry, and their writing is posted on the Afghan Women's Writing Project blog. • Hillary Clinton will visit eastern Congo next week and denounce rape as a tool of war. The rapists in the Congo plan to continue raping. • Olympic gold medalist Janet Evans is seriously pissed about the new high-tech swimsuits being used by many competitive swimmers. She claims that the fancy suits are making "a mockery of the sport." "Basically, it's technical doping," she said. • As we mentioned back in March, South Africa has seen a rise in the number of "corrective rapes," i.e. homophobic attacks designed to either "cure" or punish lesbian women, in the past few decades. Only two instances of "corrective rape" have made it to court, and there has been only one conviction. This Wednesday, three men who raped and murdered football star Eudy Simelane are set to go on trial. • William Shatner performed Sarah Palin's tweets as poetry on the Tonight Show, showing that if she's not smarter than you think, he certainly is. • A Fox News poll shows their viewers think Palin ought to stay at home with the kids and take care of Todd. Of course, when broken down by party affiliation, it was 45 percent of Democrats who said that. • Clear Channel's taken a pass on her potential radio show because they don't think she can blab for 3 hours a day. • It turns out that it's not feminists who hate men, it's non-feminists who do because they hate and love their oppressors, and prefer to blame other women for it. • Spendthrifts and frugal people tend to marry one another rather than those with more similar spending habits because apparently we're all equally self-loathing. • A Los Angeles sperm bank is letting women pick their donors based on how much they look like various celebrities. • Alpha Kappa Alpha President Barbara Mackenzie, who heads the oldest African-American sorority, is accused of commissioning a $900,000 wax likeness of herself. She swears it was only $45,000, therefore missing the point that he dues-paying members think that it's a little absurd of her to commission a wax statue of herself. • A group of albino ringtail doves discovered in a tree in Flushing will be living at the Vanderbilt Mansion in Manhattan while they recover. Rescuers think they originated from a bridal shop in Flushing, Queens until attendants kicked them out in one of those crushing scenes. • A new study from the UK reveals a "huge gender gap" when it comes to the intellectual abilities of young children. According to their research, young girls outperform boys in tasks like writing and counting. Girls are also more imaginative and creative, but boys have a better "knowledge and understanding of the world." •

Rezai continues: "But now I am working as a police officer, I think nothing can deter me." Zeinab Husseini, 19, is Rezai's kindred spirit. She was the first woman in Bamian to drive. Her father has seven daughters and no sons and needed a second driver to help at home. Plus, Husseini says: "I like driving." (In the video which accompanies this article, she can be seem beaming behind the wheel of a van.)

While the news is good for women in Bamian, farther away in Kabul, it's grim: The Independent reports that three years ago, Kim Sengupta interviewed five women who wanted to build a new Afghanistan. Today, three are dead and a fourth has fled. Writes Sengupta: "Religious fundamentalists are waging a ruthless campaign to eliminate women who have taken up high-profile jobs. Parliamentarians, schoolteachers, civil servants, security officials and women journalists have been selected for attacks by the jihadists." Malalai Kakar, the most prominent policewoman in Afghanistan — who specialized in domestic abuse cases — was killed last weekend, gunned down as her 15-year-old son prepared to driver her to work. Shaima Rezayee, a "bubbly" TV host who had a popular music show called Hop, was also shot at her home.

But even in Kabul, there are women with hope. Says police Captain Jamilla Mujahid Barzai: "It is most important that now women try to get to positions of power to stop things like that happening again. It is dangerous. But we cannot go back to [Taliban rule] again."

In Poverty and Strife, Women Test Limits
Empowering Women in Afghanistan (video) [NY Times]
Women Who Took On The Taliban – And Lost [Independent]