Oil spill's harm to pregnant women unknown
Ashley Hoffman is pregnant, lives in Alabama and loves visiting the beach. But this summer the hundreds of millions of gallons of crude oil that have spewed into the Gulf of Mexico from the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 20 are...

ACCR Foundation award recipients announced
Four distinguished Alabamians and a nonprofit foundation are recipients of the 2010 ACCR Foundation Awards. Edgar C. Gentle III:  Bailey Thomson AwardA Birmingham attorney and Rhodes Scholar, Mr. Gentle is an active proponent of constitution...

African American women in Alabama hit hard by HIV/AIDS
According to Alabama Department of Health statistics, African Americans represent 26 percent of Alabama's population, yet they make up 64 perecent of the HIV AIDS cases in the state. Today, as our series on the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Alabama continues,...

Fighting for the right to marry: a family tradition
Susan Green is a professor of practice at the Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University. She spent more than 20 years in broadcast journalism as a producer, executive producer and managing editor for stations in Phoenix, Washington,...

Women's rights treaty going nowhere fast in Senate
U.S. ratification of an international treaty to protect women's rights has been held up in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for three decades, a situation women's activists would like to change during the Obama administration. Those who have...

A daily fight to find food: One family's story
President Obama has pledged to end childhood hunger by 2015. That's less than five years away. But, if anything, the number of hungry children in America has been going up. In 2008, almost 17 million children lived in households where getting enough...

From untouchable to business women
PLENTY of people exchanging free hugs in Times Square last Sunday traveled a long way to reach New York, but it’s safe to say that few covered anything like the distances Kakuben Lalabhai Parmar had. This is not just a matter of mileage, although certainly...

A badge and a burqa
Each morning, the 23 female police officers in Kandahar walk into the city's bunkered police headquarters wearing burqas, the enveloping garments that shroud women from head to toe. The outfit is not a choice; rather, it is their most valuable protection,...

Mexico's distressed-migrant visas reach few women
When Mexico decriminalized undocumented migration from the nations south of its border through its country two years ago, it also started allowing migrant victims of violence access to humanitarian visas. However, the visas are rarely issued and the...