A surrogate mother in Cambodia, pictured at five months pregnant in 2016.

Pregnant and scared, Yin hides in a house on the outskirts of Phnom Penh — one of an untold number of Cambodian surrogate mothers risking jail time for lucrative payouts from Chinese clients.

The end of China’s one-child policy has driven desperate couples too old to bring a baby to term to poorer countries in the Mekong region, where a “womb-for-rent” industry is brushing up against legal barriers. Cambodia banned commercial surrogacy in 2016 but still has brokers — and eligible young women — skirting the ban for a price.

Marriage at age nine is permitted, working is not; make-up is evil. Those are points written in a new treatise by female “Islamic State” supporters. Now three schoolgirls from London are believed to have crossed from Turkey into Syria. Read more for women’s news that made it to the headlines.

A young Senegalese girl under cover in her mother’s traditional clothes, while they attend the official renouncement ceremony of  Female Genital Cutting (FGC) in Kidira, eastern Senegal, Sunday 12 March 2006.
Rights: picture alliance/dpa

Here’s a round-up of women’s news that made it to the headlines. Did we miss
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With more and more celebrities from the Indian Bollywood industry approaching surrogate mothers to bear a baby, the demand for surrogacy is rising. However, there are hardly any laws to protect the well-being of surrogate mothers. Women Talk Online blogger Debarati Mukherjee looks into the issue.