Women Affairs

Spears was taken to the UCLA Medical Centre about 1.30am Los Angeles time to be held against her will because she was deemed a danger to herself or others. A psychiatrist treating the singer contacted Los Angeles police to set the events in motion, celebrity website TMZ.com said, quoting law enforcement sources. A Los Angeles Fire Department ambulance transporting the 26-year-old was escorted by dozens of police on motorcycles, accompanied by a police helicopter, the Los Angeles Times said. The operation appeared to be thoroughly planned, it said. A motorcade the length of a football field surrounded the pop star and kept photographers and onlookers at bay. Spears was told of her impending confinement by her psychiatrist and did not resist when paramedics arrived and placed her on a gurney, TMZ said. The doctor told police of concerns about her reckless driving and erratic behaviour. Spears had not slept since Saturday, the website said. Continue Below Video By Reuters She was stripped...

According to the UN, 50 per cent of young women in the violent shantytowns of Haiti have been raped or sexually assaulted. Of the handful of victims who seek justice, a third are under 13. Alex Renton reports from a Caribbean hell crippled by poverty and torn by gang violence, and talks to the women who live in daily fear of sexual abuse Cité Soleil is called the worst slum in the western hemisphere. It's an ant hill of a third of a million people that seethes and swelters on the salt marshes between the blue Caribbean and the outskirts of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince. Soleil lies, as third-world slums so often do, next to the international airport, under the irony-laden roar of jets taking off to leave the country. One of these, a small passenger plane, crashed into the slum in September, the day we arrived. No one died, but it was front-page news in Haiti's daily papers. They told how, within an hour of the crash, everything had been stripped from the plane: the luggag...

Translated from Chinese. Read original article below. Two 14-year-old girl held in Sao Paulo on the 26th of the United States Figure Skating Championships podium on the board finals, which become a future champion Cheung Chau won the national championship the following year low athletes. "I was too excited, Words can not express it," When the Japanese-American girl next Cheung Chau see Scoreboard on the show after his win, and said happily. Nagano Winter Olympic Games champion Tara Lipinski Head Maintained the former won the national championship the youngest records. Cheung Chau future national champion automatically receive the identity of this year's world championships held in March the entry requirements, but does not meet the minimum age requirement World Championships (15 years old), she had to watch her defer to the runner-up places. Rachel also can be runner-up and world championships because of age requirements of the 15-year-old difference of three ...

Robert Poole and Chikako Kato Serenely and alluringly, the lotus flower opens. Unabashed, the temptress strides out, brimming with sexual beauty and proclaiming that the age of the Japanese lolita has passed. She has blossomed instead into a modern Aphrodite, a woman whose physical beauty exudes power, confidence and charisma. The "kawaii" generation watches in awe as she transforms into something startlingly sexy yet still adorable. She is erotic yet cool — "ero-kakkoii." J-pop star and fashion icon Kumi Koda may be the omnipresent face of the new Japanese woman, but she certainly isn’t alone. R&B stars like Double helped bring Western-style sexiness in Japan, paving the way for independent-minded women to recognize that seductive needn’t be synonymous with submissive. TV actresses like Aya Sugimoto are reversing the tables by flaunting their extreme sexuality in middle age, symbolizing the feminine empowerment that’s been sweeping Japan. And if Aphrodite had a...

Sylvia Poggioli France is Europe's most rigidly secular society, relegating religion to the sidelines. Paradoxically, of all the Muslims in Europe, it's the French ones who most closely identify with France's values, despite widespread social discrimination. And it's French Muslim women who are in the forefront of grassroots political activism and in forging their own interpretation of Islam. Muslim Women Leading the Charge After taking office, President Nicholas Sarkozy announced the appointment of the first Muslim — who is also a woman — as justice minister. Rachida Dati, 41, was the 12th child of a Moroccan laborer and an Algerian mother. And she is not the only Muslim woman with a senior portfolio. The foreign undersecretary for human rights is Senegal-born Rama Yade. The undersecretary for urban affairs is Fadela Amara, an activist from the immigrant housing projects. Amara is visiting Epinay Sur Seine, one of the many immigrant ghettoes that encircle Paris. Here, ...

In a way, Sueanne Winn has already won Saturday night’s Miss America pageant. In fact, she’s all the runnersup — or at least on them. Winn’s custom-swimsuit company, Winnwear Designs at 9242 S. Sheridan Road, is the national swimsuit sponsor for Miss America 2008. And you can see her suits for yourself during “Miss America Live 2008,” which is broadcast from 7 to 9 p.m. Saturday on TLC, cable channel 56. Winn has a history with pageants, she told us recently before leaving for Las Vegas, where the new Miss America will be crowned at Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas. She’s been designing swimsuits for 13 years, she said, but her background in fashion goes back farther than that. While a student at the University of Tulsa, she competed in pageants and, of course, wore the required swimsuits for each one she competed in. For 10 years, she operated her own store, specializing in pageantry attire, prom and special occasions. During that time, she developed her own line of s...

KATHLEEN HENNESSEY She's been dressed up, dressed down, relocated and updated. Now she's being mocked. The latest chapter in Miss America's ever-evolving search for viewers and cultural relevance finds the heroine at the butt of the joke. Her hair is too big, her hairspray totally '80s. Her makeup is clownish. Her gown belongs on an ice skater. This year's 52 Miss America contestants haven't just been getting judged, they've been getting zinged in "Miss America: Reality Check," a four-part reality series leading up to Saturday's 8 p.m. EST crowning on TLC. The series, whose final installment airs Friday, has tracked the transformation of beauty queens from old-fashioned "Pageant Pattys," as some in the pageant world say, to modern "It girls." It's out with the bouffant hair, the canned smile and the parade wave. Time to knock the beauty pageant on its sash, the show's tag line goes. The live crowning also ...