Not fun ones, sorry.
First, in Afghanistan:
Two Taliban assassins on a motorbike shot and killed a senior policewoman as she left for work in Afghanistan's largest southern city Sunday and gravely wounded her son.
Malalai Kakar, 41, who led Kandahar city's department of crimes against women, was leaving home Sunday when she was killed, said Zalmai Ayubi, spokesman for the Kandahar provincial governor. Her 18-year-old son was wounded, he said.
The Taliban claimed responsibility.
Militants frequently attack projects, schools and businesses run by women. The hard-line Taliban regime, which was ousted in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, did not allow women outside the home without a male escort.
President Hamid Karzai condemned the assassination, as did the European Union, which said it was "appalled by the brutal targeting" of Kakar.
The Taliban kills people for all sorts of reasons, but it's never good to forget that they are pretty keen to get women back into the houses to sit there silently as graves. It's good to remember that violence of this kind is really intended to the rest of Afghanistan women, a statement telling them that is is what you, too, may meet if you dare to step out. This, my friends, is terrorism, too.
Then about those damn vaginas (hat tip to Phila):
A leading urogynaecologist has spoken out against the growing popularity of cosmetic vaginal surgery.
Professor Linda Cardozo, of King's College Hospital, London, says little evidence exists to advise women on the safety or effectiveness of procedures.
These include operations to make the external appearance more "attractive" and reshaping the vagina to counter laxity after childbirth, for example.
...
Professor Cardozo said the most established vaginal cosmetic procedure was reduction labioplasty - a procedure to make the labia smaller - which is requested by women either for aesthetic reasons or to alleviate physical discomfort.
"Women want to emulate the supermodel. It's part of a trend. But they should know that all surgery can be risky.
Mmm. This is the way so many socio-medical news items about women are written: First shockingly explain the horrors some women (never mind how few) are willing to have performed to them (chopping off toes to fit into smaller shoes, getting rid of the unevenness in those labias). Then suggest that women really are rather vain and stupid creatures who don't want to grow old gracefully or who want to look just like supermodels. The reasons for all these operations are just the women themselves. No external pressures are applied, yanno. Women are just rather silly creatures.
Just a minute! What supermodels was professor Cardozo talking about? Do the supermodels now take their panties off on the catwalk and turn around to show us the perfection of their vaginas? I thought they were clad in expensive clothes they try to sell us. This is very weird.
She is talking about porn stars, natch. But why not mention that? Interesting...