LA Times News

LA Times News

Wounded Pakistan teen is now face of girls education movement

Posted: 13 Oct 2012 07:18 PM PDT

Malala Yousafzai, who publicly demanded an education and was shot by Taliban militants, becomes a potent symbol for the global push to improve developing countries by educating their girls.

Malala Yousafzai did not trade in her modest head scarf for a pair of skinny jeans. She wanted to go to school.

Displaced Syrians desperate for shelter as winter nears

Posted: 14 Oct 2012 12:00 AM PDT

In Syria, many of the estimated 1.5 million left homeless by fighting lack adequate food, housing and security, and see no help on the horizon.

ATMA, Syria — The rows of olive groves that line the hillsides like silent sentinels are bursting with life, both on the laden branches and the fruit-scattered ground below, where families camp out on mattresses and in tents.

North Korea's progress seems to be more style than substance

Posted: 14 Oct 2012 12:00 AM PDT

Despite new construction, fashions and items to buy, 'Day to day, our life is actually harder,' says one North Korean, who struggles to get enough to eat.

DANDONG, China — Every time Kim Kyung Ok takes the bus into North Korea's downtown Pyongyang, she's startled by changes that look positively futuristic in a country that had been stuck in a 1960s time warp.

Girl's suicide puts focus on rape in northern India

Posted: 14 Oct 2012 12:00 AM PDT

A 16-year-old committed suicide after being raped in India's Haryana state, where such crimes are prevalent. The incident and officials' reactions that appear to justify or excuse rape stir outrage.

NEW DELHI — Politics, an official's controversial comments about rape, and an upcoming election.

Border Patrol shooting of Mexican teen draws condemnation

Posted: 13 Oct 2012 12:00 AM PDT

Agents say the boy, 16, was throwing rocks. Critics have grown increasingly vocal at the frequency of such incidents and what they call a lack of transparency in follow-up investigations.

The fatal shooting of a teenager suspected of throwing rocks at U.S. Border Patrol agents has prompted strong condemnations from Mexican officials and human rights groups amid a sharp increase in agent-involved killings along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Attacks in Libya become unexpected weak spot for Obama campaign

Posted: 12 Oct 2012 05:43 PM PDT

With less than four weeks until election day, the White House is being pressed on a foreign-policy issue – previously seen as a weaker area for Republican Mitt Romney.

WASHINGTON — The lethal attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya last month has created an unexpected casualty: White House hopes that President Obama would remain relatively unscathed on foreign policy issues in the presidential race.