The photos in the window promise much: languorous, kohl-rimmed eyes and bright, bold nails — but once you enter the beauty parlours of Kabul, it becomes clear the images outside are a pale reflection of the vibrant reality inside.

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Everyone did well from Nary’s marriage to a Chinese man, except the young Cambodian bride herself, who returned home from the six-year ordeal destitute, humiliated and with little prospect of seeing her son again.

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Widely perceived as a Hindu spiritual practice, yoga was not officially permitted for decades in Saudi Arabia, the cradle of Islam where all non-Muslim worship is banned. But last November the kingdom finally recognised yoga as a sport, despite the risk of hardline opposition.

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China’s decades-long one-child policy has left the country with far fewer women of marriage age than men.

For some years now, a charity in Laos has been providing women at risk of being trafficked with a new tool to seek help: the Chinese social media app WeChat.

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Marytrini Aguilar, a 43-year-old Mexican woman with a stable marriage and two grown children, may not be what most people have in mind when they think of the word “sexting.”

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In the shot, taken on Sunday, you can see Honduran mother Maria Meza grabbing the thin arms of her two 5-year-old twin daughters Cheili and Saira as they frantically run from a tear gas canister spewing fumes.

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AS a young girl, Chan May Chong loved to fiddle with electronic gadgets and computers, often taking things apart and putting them back together to find out how they worked. Later, she loved studying math and robotics, where she learnt about programming, something which she says encouraged her to think more proactively about her surroundings.

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