Paul Yamazaki, chief buyer at City Lights. Kira Bindrim/REUTERS

Nestled on the corner of Columbus Avenue and “Jack Kerouac Alley,” City Lights Booksellers became a San Francisco icon in 1956, when founder Lawrence Ferlinghetti and store manager Shig Muraoas were arrested for publishing Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems. Nearly 60 years later, City Lights is still breaking the mold: The store just had three of its best sales years ever.

“Independent booksellers all around the country are experiencing some of their best economic years in a long time,” said Paul Yamazaki, City Lights’ veteran chief buyer. “There’s so much choice out there that it makes readers’ heads spin, and I think they’re looking to booksellers to help them.”

Nearly 20 years after the birth of Amazon—and 15 years after Barnes & Noble was dealt a backhanded censure by the film You’ve Got Mail, independent booksellers are benefiting from their attention to personal attention. The 2011 liquidation of Borders, coupled with a nationwide “Buy Local” push to boost small businesses, have helped independent stores market themselves as a viable alternative to their mega-competitors.

“Buy Local” is not a foolproof strategy. Even indies are up against e-readers and lagging book sales. But a local approach helps smaller stores survive and, in some cases, thrive.  

“Contrary to the popular narrative that independent bookstores are a dying breed, there is an extraordinary network of stores out there that are not only hanging on, but doing okay,” said Oren Teicher, chief executive of the American Booksellers Association. The association, which represents 1,600 member companies operating in 2,200 locations, saw sales across its network increase by 8 percent in 2012, and overall ABA membership has grown in each of the last three years. Over the same period, Barnes & Noble has closed a steady 15 stores per year, and plans to continue doing so for another decade. A statement from the company notes that ”some of the stores are unprofitable, while others are relocations to better properties.”

Teicher attributes indie sellers’ success to Borders closing, the advent of new and cheaper technologies, and recent blockbusters like The Hunger Games and 50 Shades of Grey. But most important, he says, are the customers.

“There are literally millions of consumers every day making the decision to shop in a locally owned business, simply because it’s a locally owned business,” he said.

With the localism movement in mind, the ABA in 2008 helped launch IndieBound, a member program and marketing push to encourage support of independent bookselling and publishing. Store owners say it has yielded a tighter connection between sellers, authors and readers, which has, in turn, brought people in their doors.

“Of course there’s always that worry about becoming the incredible shrinking bookstore,” said Joyce Meskis, owner of Denver-based Tattered Cover. “But things are leveling out.” With three stores in the Denver area, Tattered Cover is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.

Elliott Bay Book Co. Photo by Sarah Anne Ward

Seattle’s Elliott Bay Book Co. is also celebrating 40 years in the business, not all of which have been smooth sailing. Owner Peter Aaron bought the store in 1999, at the height of competition with chain stores, and spent four nail-biting years getting Elliott Bay back in the black.

“There were weeks when I had to borrow money from family and friends just to make payroll,” he said. Today, Elliott Bay has 20,000 square feet in Seattle’s Capitol Hill district. The store hosts nearly 500 author events a year, and recently brought in a consultant to improve its café fare.

To be sure, the cost of running an independent store is formidable. Miriam Sontz, CEO of Portland’s Powell’s Books, estimates that it would take around $150,000 to open a bookstore today (depending on location and size), compared with $20,000 to $30,000 in the 1970s. (Powell’s, a 68,000-square-foot, 1-million-book behemoth, is also celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.) And startup costs don’t include the financial stress of bookstores’ rolling inventory, whose sell-through rates vary wildly. Most sellers have stories of jaw-clenching fourth quarters, when 10 days of holiday sales can spell the difference between a profit or loss for the entire year.

Those realities have come to bear at stores like St. Mark’s Bookshop in New York City, which faced closure in 2011 until landlord Cooper Union agreed to a rent reduction. Nationwide, there were just 2,644 general bookstores in 2011, down 57 percent from 6,207 in 2002, according to the Library and Book Trade Almanac. U.S. Department of Commerce numbers show that total bookstore sales dropped to $15.2 billion in 2012, down from $15.3 billion in 2011 and a peak of $17.2 billion in 2007.

Booksellers point out the industry’s long history of inaccurate doomsday predictions. For example, in the 1940s, the wide availability of paperbacks was seen as a potential nail in the coffin. Stores also credit the ABA with helping to navigate the retail landscape. In November, the association inked a partnership with Canadian e-reader company Kobo that allows participating stores to make a percentage from their customers’ e-book purchases. The ABA says around 400 stores are participating, Powell’s and Tattered Cover among them.

But even with the ABA’s help, sellers admit they are facing an uphill battle. The difference is that after a half-century of industry turmoil, uphill is the only kind of battle they know. Said Elliott Bay’s Peter Aaron: “I either have enormous reserves of denial, or I’m just an inveterate optimist.”

Attorneys of dead anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky sit in front of an empty defendants cage during a court session in Moscow, March 22, 2013.  REUTERS/Mikhail Voskresensky

In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the rule of law is most often seen as the law of rulers.

Russia’s judicial system is perceived as a means to curb the influence of figures who pose a threat to the Kremlin. In 2005, Yukos Oil CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky was imprisoned on trumped-up charges of fraud in one of Russia’s most controversial cases. In 2009 Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who accused police officials of stealing $230 million from the government in a tax fraud scheme, died in prison after being held for a year without charge. And in April of this year, Russian prosecutors suspended a leftist opposition group for three months, barring the Left Front from organizing or accessing their bank account until July 19.

It is not surprising, then, that Russians don’t trust the objectivity of their courts.  Daniel Rothstein, a commercial lawyer who has practiced in Russia, said in a phone interview that during the 1990s, “people didn’t trust the courts at all.” And yet, despite the perception of high courts as malleable to Putin’s influence and the fear of unjust arrest and conviction without trial, Russia’s lower courts are flooded with disputants and generally well reviewed.

It is difficult, from a Western perspective, to understand the discrepancy between a lack of faith in the courts and a willing endorsement of their functionality. But Russian legal expert William Butler, a law professor at Penn State, says that Russians attitude toward the court is a paradox – despite their suspicion, “Russians go to court a lot. They’re very litigious.” According to Kathryn Hendley, a professor of law and political science at the University of Wisconsin Law School who has spent time in Russian Justice-of-the-Peace (JP) courts observing civil suits, cases such as Khordokovsky’s and Magnitsky’s “don’t get much traction in Russia,” where the press is controlled by the state. “There is the Internet and people could get more information if they wanted, but people aren’t really interested in these kinds of political cases.”

According to her research, “litigants are generally satisfied with their experiences at the JP courts.” Civil court proceedings are relatively quick and inexpensive, she explains. Judges feel pressure to turn cases around swiftly, preventing small claims cases from being held up. In a 2009 survey asking citizens in three regions about their encounters with JP courts, only 10 percent of respondents said their judges were biased. Over 70 percent said they believe the JP courts largely rule in favor of the side that presents a stronger legal case.

What emerges is a system that functions fairly well on a civil level, where judges are formally appointed by governors or regional legislators rather than the president, but falters in criminal and other cases, when judicial incentives are often subject to political influence. In these cases, Russians appear to employ an extra-judicial common sense in deciding whether to bring a case to court. According to commercial attorney Rothstein, “almost every large [commercial] deal involving foreigners and also many large deals just involving Russians provide for arbitration or litigation of disputes outside of Russia, because nobody wants to be at the mercy of the unpredictable Russian courts.” He added, though, that some Russian clients were more willing to go to trial because they “know how to influence the court.” Professor Hendley adds, “if you’re mad at your neighbor, go to court. If you’re against someone who’s more powerful than you – then a greater reluctance sets in.”

If Russian courts run the gamut on a legitimacy spectrum, Russians appear to have a fairly keen understanding of how to navigate the system. In an interview posted on the Hermitage Capital Management (HCM) website, William Browder, the investment fund’s founder – and the man who employed Magnitsky to conduct the investigation that lead to his death – argued that Khodorkovsky would have avoided punishment if he’d played by Putin’s rules:

I suspect that Khodorkovsky could bargain his release from prison from the very beginning. After all, Gusinsky had done so and was spared further harassment. He gave his TV channel to the state and left the country. Khodorkovsky could follow suit. He could give Yukos to the state. Instead, he launched a PR campaign against Putin… The events took a stiff turn as soon as it became clear that Khodorkovsky would not compromise with Putin.

But unwritten law is easily broken, and when Magnitsky died of heart failure and toxic shock, allegedly due to untreated pancreatitis but also following a prison beating and with no autopsy to confirm a ruling, Browder called Russia a “criminal state,” and said that Magnitsky had been “held hostage and [the state] killed their hostage.”

Magnitsky’s legacy weighs heavily today. Russia officially closed the investigation into his death days before the beginning of a posthumous trial, seen largely as a way to repair an internationally damaged image by finding the dead man guilty of tax fraud. President Obama recently named 18 alleged human rights abusers who would be denied access to the U.S. if they attempted to enter from Russia, 16 of whom were implicated in the lawyer’s death. The Sergei Magnitsky Act prompted Putin to name 18 Americans who would not be admitted to Russia, straining ties between the two countries.

An optimist might view the Magnitsky case as a tipping point in Russia’s judicial dealings. The posthumous trial may not succeed in changing the public’s view of Magnitsky as a casualty of corruption, a reputation aided by the United State’s Sergei Magnitsky Act. According to Rothstein, the Russian “people are becoming more and more sophisticated as to what to expect, what things should be like in a normal country, and therefore more and more aware of what’s not normal in Russia.” A confluence of internal attitude and international censure may be a step, however small, toward a system that works in both its highest and lowest iterations.

INDIO, Calif, – Once upon a time, there was a rock music festival held every April in the California desert whose meticulous curation of artists old and new made it the de facto tastemaker for the industry. Today, there is just Coachella. And although this three-day frolic in the sun may no longer be the most influential gathering of its kind, it has achieved something potentially even larger – an ability to sustain itself.

The three-day music marathon concluded its second weekend on Sunday, selling some 150,000 passes in total and making it the most-successful festival of its kind with gross receipts of about $50 million, according to Billboard. Almost 150 bands, musicians and performance artists made the trek to Indio, a scruffy suburb of Palm Springs, on two successive weekends to play on one of a half-dozen stages.

On this, the 14th Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, it would not be far off to say the event’s financial success has eclipsed its influence. Coachella once was the premier showcase for bands on the precipice of breaking out ‑ Arcade Fire or LCD Soundsystem come to mind – or those re-forming ‑ such as Pavement or Rage Against the Machine – to play for audiences who rediscovered their music.

Yet 2013 may prove to be the year that the festival, and the Coachella brand, transcended the music. Look no further than this year’s lineup. As music bloggers have remarked, Coachella 2013 was notably light on big names or breakout performers. The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Blur, main stage headliners on Friday and Sunday, long ago reached their peaks of popularity. Saturday’s closing acts were New Order, Sigur Ros and Phoenix. The latter, the youngest of the bunch, played the main stage. But having been active as long as Coachella has been in existence, Phoenix is hardly a breakout act.

There wasn’t even a major first-time reunion draw, one of the most successful Coachella features. British New Wave group Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark played for the first time on American shores in years. But not only did it play one of the smaller stages, the Gobi Tent, it played third fiddle to electronic acts Dub FX and Disclosure.

Yet despite a lackluster lineup, tickets sold out for both weekends. Most were sold even before the lineup had been officially announced. True, three-day general admission passes were advertised on the Internet for as little as half the $349 face value right up until the second weekend kickoff. But the crowds that jammed into Indio’s Empire Polo Grounds suggested there were not many unused wristbands.

Ironically, these queuing masses are an indication not just of Coachella’s popularity but also of the festival’s ability to remain relevant even after its role as tastemaker has diminished. In a sense, what looks like a security gantlet designed to inconvenience may be best viewed as a reflection of sound long-term risk management.

After 9/11, Americans found their travel lives had been altered permanently by stepped-up security measures, having to arrive extra-early at the airport or having to doff shoes for the metal detector. Post-Boston, Americans must adjust to terror of a more random sort, something that can turn any gathering of citizens, such as those waiting at the finish line of a race, into a lethal tragedy. Coachella’s organizers appear to have understood this well before Boston, though security was stepped up in subtle ways between weekend one and weekend two.

The venue is surrounded by a veritable ziggurat of metal fencing and checkpoints. The full-body pat-downs begin about half a mile from the festivities. Girls to the left, where a female guard runs her hands up, down, even around the underside of their breasts. Men queue to the right, where they must empty their pockets, and turn their back to the guard and submit. Pockets, even wallets, are randomly searched.

An elderly concertgoer was busted with two joints in his pack of Marlboros and escorted to the “Amnesty Box,” where he was forced to dump his delicately rolled cigarillos. I was asked to tip my hat to ensure there was nothing hiding above my scalp or in the underside of my cap. After all this, festivalgoers must present their wristbands to an electronic reader.

A couple hundred yards later, through various horse gates, miles of additional fencing and a merger with another lane of pedestrians coming from the parking area, attendees are subjected to an identical security check. Once inside the grounds, buying a beer requires another set of security checks. Apart from the line to present identification, each beer garden entry is manned by three people checking wristbands.

Now, to experienced concertgoers, Coachella’s combination of a so-so musical lineup and airport-like security may not sound like a winning formula. But the veterans and music geeks are only along for the ride at this point. Coachella’s promoter, Goldenvoice, a division of the Anschutz Entertainment Group, has achieved something else.

Creating a safe environment – like a mall where even rainy-day music lovers get to sample a broad array of artists, including some like Nick Cave that would not normally get to play in front of a large crowd – is what makes Coachella sustainable, commercially and culturally.

For older folks (such as this author) unaccustomed to passing through Checkpoint Charlie for a concert, for post-Boston America the combination just might be sufficient for me to allow my children to attend. That suggests a viable business that crosses generations ‑ even if it is just a big party.

PHOTO: Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers performs during the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California April 14, 2013. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

Statistically, the perception’s not too far off. Forty-seven percent of Americans reported owning a gun in a 2011 Gallup poll, and data compiled by the Guardian from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime shows there are nearly nine guns for every 10 people in the United States, the highest level of ownership in the world.

Elsewhere in the world, private gun ownership is subject to different laws and premised on different cultural backgrounds. In a series of photo essays, Reuters photographers around the world chronicled vignettes of gun culture, capturing scenes from shooting ranges, hunting expeditions, roadside murders, and more. These recollections from the professionals who bear witness to the use of deadly weapons help give context to the role guns play in our world.

A recent spate of high-profile mass shootings, including at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, and a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, led to renewed calls for gun policy reform in the United States. President Obama took up the mantle with legislative proposals such as background check requirements and a renewed ban on assault weapons. Proponents of tougher laws say easily-accessible firearms contribute to the United States’ shockingly high death toll - data trends suggest that Americans will be more likely to die from gun violence than car accidents by 2015. Yet tighter controls are unwelcome by critics who believe that gun ownership is a constitutionally-enshrined right rooted in mistrust of the government.

Coming in a distant second for the highest level of gun ownership in the world is Yemen, a country often described as awash with arms. Yemen trails far behind the U.S. in terms of gun ownership, with an average of fewer than 55 firearms for every hundred people. In a piece for the Atlantic, journalist Tik Root writes that while traditional law once dictated a certain etiquette on using weapons, those guidelines “have since been bent and broken, with gun use now undoubtedly going beyond mere self-defense.” Following the 2011 uprising against its ruler, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen’s weak central government faces challenges including food insecurity and threats from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Notoriously neutral Switzerland has a lot of firearms, putting it in third place with roughly 46 guns per 100 people. Gun ownership is tied closely to Switzerland’s national security, as military service is compulsory for men and soldiers are issued rifles to keep at home. As a result, essentially every military-aged man possesses a gun. Swiss photographers Denis Balibouse and Ruben Sprich snapped photographs from their homeland, recalling their personal relationships with firearms. However, a recent policy initiative has changed the immediate availability of these weapons. In 2007, Switzerland passed legislation dictating that military ammunition be stored apart from firearms. Now all army ammunition is kept in central arsenals outside of the home.

Reuters photographers ventured to several other corners of the earth to snap pictures of gun use. In Germany, Michaela Rehle braved freezing weather to accompany 31-year-old Ramona Pohl-Uebel, who loves shooting boar and deer in nature but seldom eats meat, on what turned out to be a fruitless hunt. And in Canada, Reuters photographer Andy Clark blogged about his visit to a shooting range outside Vancouver.

In the Philippines, Reuters photographer Bobby Ranoco followed a pistol-packing judge who presides over court with a loaded .45 caliber pistol on hand.  In his free time, Judge “Jimmy” teaches his fellow judges and lawyers shooting skills. The Philippines ranks high in its rate of homicide by firearm. Despite lax enforcement and relatively easy access to weapons, there is little political will to tighten gun laws, in part because politicians rely on armed guards. During election season, a temporary and an often-ignored ban on carrying firearms underscores the potential for violence to escalate.

For the second year in a row, Honduras claimed the unwelcome distinction of having the world’s most violent city. San Pedro Sula, the country’s second-largest city after the capital Tegucigalpa, has a homicide rate of 169 per 100,000 people.  Laws in Honduras allow civilians to own up to five personal guns, and 83.4% of homicides are by firearm compared to sixty percent in the United States. Arms trafficking has flooded the country, and nearly seventy percent of weapons are estimated to be illegal. Reuters photographer Jorge Cabrera visited this “supermarket” for dangerous stories, where he photographed a crowded local hospital and its morgue. He recounts how police did not intervene in a drive-by shooting just houses away from their station “because they didn’t want to die.”

Killing kangaroos in Australia may not sit well with some, yet that’s just what government authorizes some volunteers to do. A spike in the kangaroo population has caused problems for farmers and damage to the environment, and the solution has been licensing shooters to keep the population in check. Reuters photographer David Gray shared his experience accompanying an Australian plumber on one of these controversial culls.

Following the Newtown school shooting in Connecticut, some commentators turned to Australia as a model for how enacting strict gun control laws might prevent mass shootings. In 1996, an Australian man opened fire at a tourist site in Port Arthur, Tasmania, killing 35 people. Soon after, the government outlawed semiautomatic and automatic rifles and shotguns, and implemented a mandatory buy-back program. The success of the program has been met with mixed reviews.

The above statistics, while helpful for the sake of comparison, do little to elucidate the real-life impact of firearms compared to first-hand accounts.

Reuters photographers found one recent assignment exceptionally difficult. The mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012 involved documenting the grief and anger of a community that had lost 20 children to senseless violence. In a multimedia presentation, Reuters interviewed the photographers who covered Newtown, in which they recount their stories of documenting the aftermath.

Despite covering two other shootings this year, senior photographer Shannon Stapleton called it the “hardest assignment” of his career. “It borderlined on evil for me,” he said.

The massive media presence angered some residents. Photographer Lucas Jackson recounted being called names, but knew he had to do his job and “let these people just yell at [him] if they want to.”

The disturbing details provide an inside look at the impact of one man’s access to deadly weapons, a tragedy that is but one snapshot of U.S. gun culture that shocks the rest of the world. In an interview, senior photographer Mike Segar explains the importance of photographing funerals for the victims.  ”I think that this was a tragedy that struck so many people around the world as being so horrible that they had to see that.”

PHOTO: A visitor of DVC Indoor Shooting Centre fires a pistol on their range in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, March 22, 2013.  REUTERS/Andy Clark

An anti-abortion sign is seen during the Ninth Annual Walk for Life West Coast rally in San Francisco, California, January 26, 2013. REUTERS/Stephen Lam

Nearly six months after an election that underscored the political divide over abortion, North Dakota’s governor enacted a law that bans abortions in most cases once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, or as early as six weeks. It is the most restrictive abortion law in the United States.

The North Dakota law has  plenty of company. In 2011 and 2012, U.S. states passed more than 130 restrictions on abortion, according to abortion rights group the Guttmacher Institute. Among those provisions are fetal heartbeat laws like North Dakota’s, as well as “fetal pain” laws, which make abortion illegal after 20 weeks based on controversial research that suggests a fetus can experience pain at that time. Ten states have passed such laws in recent years. (Roe v. Wade allowed the right to abortion services until a medically accepted point of viability, to be determined by the doctor, and generally considered 22-24 weeks.)

Politicians in these states argue that their measures are intended to protect women’s health, make abortion procedures more safe and curtail abortions provided for spurious reasons like the fetus’ gender or race. Many also argue, as North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple did this week, that state legislatures have a “legislative right to find out if these laws can stand.”

Below are seven states that have added provisions, restrictions or caveats on how and when women can get abortions. This is by no means a comprehensive list, and many of these bills are being replicated in states not listed below. Most of these provisions are mired in appeals.

ALABAMA
In February, the Alabama House of Representatives passed The Women’s Health and Safety Act, which says that an Alabama-licensed physician must be present at every abortion, and that those doctors have admitting privileges at local hospitals. Supporters of the Alabama bill, which needs Senate approval and Governor Robert Bentley’s signature, say it ensures women’s safety. Representative Mary Sue McClurkin, a Republican who sponsored the legislation, said the Act “protects the right of a woman having an abortion to have it in a safe and healthy environment.” But critics argue that hospitals often refuse admitting privileges to abortion doctors solely because they perform abortions, and a proposed amendment that would have prohibited such denials was voted down. One of 10 states with fetal pain laws, Alabama also bans abortions after 20 weeks—with exceptions for the health of the mother—and requires an ultrasound and counseling before an abortion procedure.

ARIZONA
In 2011, Governor Jan Brewer signed into law a bill that made Arizona the first U.S. state to outlaw abortions performed on the basis of the race or gender of the fetus. Backers of the measure said the bill would eliminate sex- and race-related discrimination, while critics denounced it for forcing women to publicly state their reason for terminating a pregnancy. In April 2012, Arizona passed the Women’s Health and Safety Act, which prohibits abortions once 20 weeks have passed since a woman’s last menstrual period, or about 18 weeks after fertilization (and with exceptions in cases where the life of the mother is at risk). The Center for Reproductive Rights and the ACLU sued to stop that law, but a judge upheld it. An appeal by the CRR is slated for resolution this year. Arizona also requires pre-abortion ultrasounds and counseling; both must occur at least 24 hours in advance of the procedure. In May of last year, the state also banned abortion providers like Planned Parenthood from receiving state funds.

ARKANSAS
The Human Heartbeat Protection Act, which would ban nearly all abortions after 12 weeks, was approved this month by Arkansas’ Republican-controlled House and Senate, which collectively overruled a veto from Democratic Governor Mike Beebe. Slated to go into effect this summer, the law would ban most abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected by a standard ultrasound, with exceptions for rape, incest, the life of the mother and major fetal conditions. The Heartbeat Protection Act comes on the heels of an Arkansas law that took effect in February, which bans most abortions after 20 weeks. Beebe, whose veto was overridden on the 20-week ban as well, called the latest measure “blatantly unconstitutional,” and the ACLU of Arkansas and the Center for Reproductive Rights say they will challenge the law in federal court. Should Arkansas lose that challenge, it will have to pay all legal fees in the case. Rep. Anne Clemmer told CNN that “protecting unborn children is … an important way to spend state resources.”

IDAHO
Earlier this month, Idaho became the first state to have its fetal pain law—banning abortions after 20 weeks—struck down by the federal courts. U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled in favor of Jennie Linn McCormack, an Idaho resident who sued over the law after she was charged with a felony for obtaining an illegal abortion. Winmill also ruled against a handful of other Idaho abortion provisions. One would have required first-trimester abortions be performed by a physician in a staffed office or clinic (limiting drug-induced abortions). Another would have required that  second-trimester abortions be performed in a hospital, and a third would have criminalized the woman (as opposed to the doctor) in certain cases for undergoing the procedure. Revised bills aimed at bringing Idaho’s abortion laws in line with Winmill’s decision have stalled in the state Senate.

KANSAS
Kansas’ anti-abortion bill is back in the state legislature after failing to pass last session. Now revived and approved by the House, the bill is expected to pass in the Senate, and Governor Sam Brownback is expected to sign it. The bill would eliminate abortions as a tax-deductible health care expense, require doctors to provide women with information about abortion risks, and implement a “personhood” clause that defines life as beginning at fertilization.  “While that won’t save any babies today or tomorrow or the day after this bill is hopefully signed, what it will do, I hope, is help set the context on more substantive restrictions in the future,” Kansas House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lance Kinzer said during debate on the bill. It does not include exceptions for victims of rape or incest, and also prohibits anyone who works for an abortion provider from also working in a school. It also comes on top of Kansas’ 2011-enacted fetal pain law, which bans abortions after 21 weeks.

NORTH DAKOTA
Governor Jack Dalrymple earlier this week signed into law a bill banning abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected using “standard medical practice.” (The law doesn’t elaborate there, but fetal heartbeats are detectable at about six weeks using a transvaginal ultrasound, or 10-12 weeks with a standard abdominal ultrasound.) North Dakota’s bill provides exceptions for the health of the mother, but none for rape, and doctors performing an abortion after a heartbeat is detected could face a felony charge punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. The Center for Reproductive Rights said it plans to file a legal challenge to the law before it takes effect on Aug. 1. Also this week, Dalrymple signed a bill that bans abortions based solely on genetic abnormalities—making North Dakota the first state to enact such a law—and another that requires abortion doctors to obtain admitting privileges from local hospitals. The House also passed a “personhood” bill that would amend the state’s constitution to give legal rights and protections to human embryos. That measure, whose scope some doctors say could extend to in-vitro fertilization and stem-cell research, will likely go to North Dakota voters in 2014.

TEXAS
During a press conference last year, Governor Rick Perry said his goal “is to make abortion, at any stage, a thing of the past.” To date, the state has aimed for that goal by enacting measures to inform potential abortion recipients of the risks. Texas requires women seeking abortions to have a sonogram at least 24 hours before the procedure, and the doctor performing the sonogram must display the image of the fetus, make the heartbeat audible, and verbally describe the sonogram result. Perry—whose exclusion of Planned Parenthood from the state’s women’s health program was approved by a judge last year—has also voiced support for banning all abortions after 20 weeks. Most recently, Texas’ Senate Bill 537 would regulate abortion clinics as if they were ambulatory care centers. Such laws—dubbed TRAP, for Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers—mandate building specifications like hallway width and pipelines for general anesthesia. Also on the horizon in Texas: measures that would require abortion providers to collect more information on patients, and provisions that would restrict medical abortions.

The stated goal of the invasion was to rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction – which never materialized – and topple dictator Saddam Hussein, who turned up in a farmhouse cellar later that year and ultimately was hanged for his role in a massacre of Iraqis in 1982.

The civilian casualty count was grisly, with at least 134,000 Iraqis killed, according to a report from the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. Reuters journalist Daniel Trotta points out that this number does not account for deaths caused indirectly by the war, such as ruined infrastructure and “the mass exodus of doctors” from the country.

Political turmoil was quick to follow. The week U.S. forces withdrew from Iraq, Sunni Vice President Tariq al Hashemi fled the country after authorities put out a warrant for his arrest.  Hashemi’s supporters called the terrorism charges against him a power grab by Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. Last September, an Iraqi court sentenced Hashemi to death in absentia.

Iraq’s sectarian strife extends to its foreign relations with neighbors like Shia Iran. In a thinly veiled reference to Iran, Hashemi complained of the “growing influence of neighboring countries in our internal affairs.” Before the war, Iraq and Iran balanced each other while vying for regional power in the Persian Gulf. With Iraq destabilized, Iran stepped up to fill the void in the region and exert influence on Iraq’s domestic politics, throwing cold water on U.S. hopes that installing a pro-American government in Iraq would put pressure on Iran. A 2007 CATO Institute report notes that the Bush administration was so concerned with ousting Saddam Hussein that they “largely overlooked the wider geopolitical ramifications of his removal.” (For more on Iraq’s sectarian conflict, read this Council on Foreign Relations report from August 2012.)

Human rights abuses still abound in Iraq, both from armed opposition groups and the government’s subsequent response. According to a March 2013 report by Amnesty International, torture, unfair trials, and ill-treatment of detainees are rife. Women’s rights are in a precarious position. And Human Rights Watch noted in its 2013 World Report that Iraqi leadership used “draconian measures” against journalists, prisoners, protesters, and politicians last year.

A recent uptick in violence also puts the country on wobbly legs. Though the number of deaths is much lower than during the civil war, insurgent attacks and ongoing sectarian violence don’t bode well for the country’s stability.

Such is the state of Iraq, all for a cool $2 trillion (at least $8 billion of which may have been wasted, according to the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen). U.S. spending on projects was often misdirected; as one Iraqi told author and former foreign service officer Peter Van Buren, “It is like I am standing naked in a room with a big hat on my head. Everyone comes in and helps put flowers and ribbons on my hat, but no one seems to notice that I am naked.”

To mark the ten year anniversary, Reuters presents a selection of the most iconic images from our photographers over the course of the war. As a generation of war-scarred Iraqis face their country’s future without U.S. involvement, the number of images reaching an international audience will undoubtedly decline. These photographs serve as a testament to the legacy of the decade of U.S. intervention.

See the full photo gallery with first-person accounts from the photographers here.

PHOTO: U.S. Marine Corp Assaultman Kirk Dalrymple watches as a statue of Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein falls in central Baghdad April 9, 2003. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic

TOP PHOTO: A group of Iraqi boys gather to watch smoke billowing from burning oil on the outskirts of the town of Baiji, north of Baghdad, March 15, 2005. REUTERS/Sabah Hamid HH/AT/FA

PHOTO: An Afghan parliament member (L) votes on a list of cabinet nominees at the parliament house in Kabul, January 16, 2010. REUTERS/Ahmad Masood

It’s International Women’s Day, but hold the confetti. More than a century after the first Women’s Day celebration—a socialist proposal inaugurated in 1909—fewer than one in five parliamentarians worldwide are women.

Acknowledging the inequality, many countries have implemented voluntary or mandatory minimums for the percentage of women in government. Such quotas are supported by a wealth of leaders, including U.N. Women Executive Director Michelle Bachelet, who has said she “[encourages] countries to use quotas to expand women’s participation in parliament.”

Yet gender mandates have their detractors, who say the idea of reserving seats for women is ineffective at best and undemocratic at worst. One criticism holds that quotas delegitimize female politicians, who are seen as not having “earned” their positions. In some countries, women serve in government as puppets for their husbands, and in others female politicians with limited powers are seen as little more than window dressing.

What follows is a handful of national case studies, quick looks at where women’s representation – and particularly their meaningful participation – has increased or not. For more on quotas, this handy map outlines which countries reserve seats or legislate quotas for women.

UNITED STATES: American exceptionalism makes exception for women
For all the attention paid to Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, the United States remains decidedly mediocre when it comes to female representation in politics, ranking 77th in the world by percentage of legislative seats held by women. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, an international organization of national parliaments, approximately 17.8 percent of the House of Representatives are women, as well as 20 percent of the Senate. In total, there have been just 39 female senators in the nation’s history, and 20 of them are currently serving. The U.S. does not employ quotas to encourage or mandate female participation in government or corporate America, but remains obsessed with Michelle Obama’s bangs.

UNITED KINGDOM: Beyond the Queen Mum
Prime Minister David Cameron’s pre-election pledge that one third of the UK’s ministerial jobs would be taken by women by before 2015 hasn’t exactly come true. In reality, just four of the UK’s 23 cabinet positions are currently held by women, down from five before a 2012 reshuffling. Gender equality is on better display in Parliament, where one in five members (22 percent in both the House of Commons and House of Lords) are female. Although the UK has made progress—prior to 1987, women never made up more than 5 percent of Parliament—critics say they have a ways to go: The country ranks only fifteenth out of 27 EU member states in its portion of female members of Parliament, according to a March 2013 report issued by the government.

SOUTH AFRICA: A quota success story
A dramatic example of gender quotas in action, South Africa currently ranks eighth in the world by percentage of legislative seats held by women, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. That’s up from a ranking of 141st back in 1994, when the African National Congress first instituted a quota system reserving 30 percent of parliamentary candidacies for women. Currently, 42.3 percent of South Africa’s 400-person National Assembly are women, as well as 32.1 percent of the 54 permanent seats in the National Council of Provinces. But all is not well in gender politics: The country is still struggling with its apartheid past, as well as disconcerting statistics on rape. The Medical Research Council of South Africa estimates that up to 3,600 rapes happen daily in the country of nearly 52 million, and more than one-third of South African men admitted to rape in a government survey.

NORWAY: The gender balance trendsetter
With an enviable 46 weeks of paid maternity leave, Norway is notoriously female-friendly (it was also the first country to introduce paternity leave). Although the country has no legal provisions for gender balance in government, Norway’s Socialist Left party first introduced a voluntary gender quota—aiming for a 40 percent minimum on female candidates—in 1975, and other parties have followed suit. In 2004, Parliament even passed a law requiring publicly owned companies to have at least 40 percent women on their boards of directors. Today, 39.6 percent of Norway’s 169-member Parliament are women.

AFGHANISTAN: Shaky gains at a crossroads before 2014
Recent improvements in women’s freedom could come under attack after the United States withdraws from Afghanistan in 2014. Since the 2001 U.S.-led intervention, the country’s parliament has implemented quotas that ensure female candidates receive a little over a quarter of parliamentary seats. Despite unclear rules on implementation, the system “has played a vital role in maintaining a significant presence of women in both parliament and [provincial councils],” according to a report by the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, an independent research organization. Yet trouble is brewing, beginning with a decree by President Hamid Karzai in 2010 that a man could take a woman’s seat if it were vacated, opening the door to intimidation attempts. Under Taliban rule, Afghan women were forbidden to leave the house without a male relative’s accompaniment.

IRAQ: Running for office because my husband told me to
Just because you’ve got the numbers doesn’t mean you’ve got the clout. The Iraqi Constitution mandates that women fill 25 percent of seats in parliament. Yet while women are much better integrated professionally in Iraq than Afghanistan, the quota system also serves as a good case study in how filling quota requirements may fail to benefit women. The New York Times noted that Iraqi women had “less political influence” after the 2010 election “than at any time since the American invasion.” Moreover, a woman’s candidacy may serve as a thinly-veiled bid for office by her husband or brother. As Isobel Coleman, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, points out, “Many of the women on party lists [in the 2010 elections] were relatives of politicians or from prominent families.” Once in office, women may be relegated to insignificant ministries and still be subservient to male party leaders.

ITALY: Moving beyond “bunga bunga”
With a former prime minister whose claims to infamy include paying for sex with an underage dancer, Italy isn’t known for its emphasis on gender equality. But while the country’s most recent elections ended in political turmoil, they also upped the share of women in Parliament to 31 percent—versus 20 percent in the previous legislature—a shift aided in part by the Democratic Party’s requirement that 50 percent of its candidates be women. Italy also passed a law last year requiring public companies to ensure that one third of their board members are women by 2015; in January 2012, women accounted for just 6 percent of corporate board membership.

RUSSIA: Putin fights tigers, jails women
Observed since 1913 in Russia, International Women’s Day is still widely celebrated there, despite the fact that just 74 of the country’s 613-member Parliament are women. Of course, one of those women is Valentina Matvienko, the first female chairperson of the Federation Council of Russia (the upper chamber of Parliament) and arguably the third-most important person in the country after President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. But Russia has a ways to go on gender equality: The United Nations has pegged the country’s male/female wage gap at over 30 percent, and Putin’s jailing of all-female punk band Pussy Riot was seen as indicative of the country’s limited political freedoms.

RWANDA: Women dominate parliament
If you had to guess the world’s only government where women are the majority, Rwanda might not come to mind. Yet following a genocide that left a 70-percent-female population and quotas guaranteeing women 30 percent of posts in decision-making bodies, women surpassed the minimum to make up 56 percent of Rwanda’s current parliament. Greater representation in parliament has meant women were able to pass legislation on gender issues, including abolishing patriarchal laws.

North Korean villagers dance and soldiers take a rest at a North Korean village near the truce village of Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas in this picture taken just south of the border in Paju, north of Seoul, February 15, 2013. REUTERS/Lee Jae-Won

Facing sanctions, North Korea threatens to end truce with South. In response to North Korea’s February 12 nuclear test, the U.S. and China have brokered a provisional deal on a draft U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution.  The details of the agreement are yet to be revealed, but U.N. diplomats have given a general outline:

Council diplomats have said that they would like to strengthen the provisions in previous sanctions resolutions adopted after North Korea's 2006 and 2009 nuclear tests, above all those related to the inspection and seizure of shipments of banned items and toughening financial restrictions.

In response to the prospect of increased sanctions, Pyongyang has stepped up its rhetoric. Following initial condemnations, North Korea claimed that the third nuclear test was executed in self-defense against the U.S. Now, North Korea’s state news agency KCNA reports, the Korean People’s Army Supreme Command spokesman has said that if the U.S. and South Korea move forward with military drills, the North will cancel the armistice it has had with the South Korea since 1953. Serious words from a nation that recently threatened the “final destruction” of its neighbor.

The papal plot thickens. More than 140 cardinals gathered for a first “general congregation” this week to help determine who will be the next pope. Only those below the age of 80 will be eligible for the papacy and allowed to vote in the conclave which will make the ultimate decision. All are hoping for access to a secret report prepared for the Pope Emeritus by three cardinals, which detailed the “Vatileaks” scandal and was cinematically exposed:

Paolo Gabriele, the pope's butler, was convicted of stealing personal papal documents and leaking them to the media. The documents alleged corruption and infighting over the running of its bank. Gabriele was jailed and later pardoned by Benedict.

Late last month the Vatican asserted that only the new pope will gain access to the document.

Hugo Chavez’s health takes a hit. It appears Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has been battling cancer since he was diagnosed in mid-2011, has taken a turn for the worse:

In one of the gloomiest announcements to date on Chavez's health, the government said on Monday night that his breathing problems had worsened and he was suffering from a "severe" new respiratory infection in a Caracas military hospital.

Photos of a smiling Chavez revealed in mid-February show a waxy visage. In the event of Chavez’s death, an election for a new president would take place within 30 days, with opposition leader Henrique Capriles and Chavez-endorsed Vice President Nicolas Maduro named as likely candidates.

Nota Bene: In Shanghai, families are living in shipping containers. The photos from Reuters are heartwrenching.

Standouts:

Russian Roulette - The trial of Russian anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky will move forward, even though Magnitsky has been dead for three years. (BBC)

Czech mate - The Czech Republic’s outgoing president has been charged with high treason. (The New York Times)

Not ready for my closeup - Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is unpleased with Forbes’ suggestion that he’s anything less than one of the world’s top-ten richest men. (Forbes)

Palestinian-only bus torched - Two of the Palestinian-only buses, launched by Israel yesterday, have been torched. (Al Jazeera)

Afghanistan’s tech revolution - Afghanistan takes a leadership role in the high-tech industry. (Time)

From the File:

• Fifty wounded in Egypt port city as police battle protesters

• Dead 60 years, Stalin's influence lingers in Putin's Russia

• Italian president mulls new technocrat government

• Kurdish rebels attack Turkish military vehicle

• French unions lead protests over labor deal

Shamefully, neither had I until two weeks ago, when I stumbled across a card sent to the Sandy Hook Elementary School. My 12-year-old son and I were combing through a dozen boxes, from among the tens of thousands of cards and letters that have arrived at our town hall. We were looking for artwork we could use to decorate the office walls of Sandy Hook Promise, the nonprofit I co-founded with fellow citizens to help our community heal and eventually find its voice on matters related to eliminating gun violence

The card is simple – one page of white paper, folded and adorned with a valentine on the front. Inside, another heart, with a message in red marker: “Stay Strong + Stay United. In Chardon We Are One Heartbeat.” At first glance, there was nothing that distinguished this letter from the millions of others carrying similarly lovely sentiments. That was until I read the blue cursive writing inside.

“Ten months after our school shooting at Chardon High School on Feb. 27, 2012, we are still healing and supporting each other. We still have the red ribbons tied around trees, up on houses and various places in town.” Gutted and embarrassed that Chardon had not registered in the least, I turned to the Internet.

It turns out that on that day in the school cafeteria, 17-year-old T.J. Lane fired 10 shots from a .22-caliber semiautomatic Ruger handgun, a weapon he obtained from his uncle’s home the night before. Demetrius Hewlin, 16; Daniel Parmentor, 16; and Russell King, 17, died from their wounds. Three other teenagers were injured. (On Tuesday, Lane pleaded guilty to multiple homicide charges.)

How could it be that none of my unusually plugged-in friends, acquaintances or contacts ‑ with their top-shelf educations and access to information ‑ recalled what happened at Chardon, whose grim one-year anniversary approaches on Wednesday?

More than anything, this seemingly collective failure to recognize Chardon’s tragedy embodies what the late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan railed against in a classic 1993 essay on the subject of violence. “The amount of deviant behavior in American society,” Moynihan wrote in the American Scholar, has increased beyond the levels the community can ‘afford to recognize’ and that, accordingly, we have been re-defining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatized, and also quietly raising the ‘normal’ level in categories where behavior is now abnormal by any earlier standard.”

The definition of deviancy, of course, has been the subject of much cultural warfare. But when it comes to violence, Moynihan’s warning is without controversy. It would appear that we have become inured not just to the awful shootings that take place every day in our cities but even to those exceptional acts of mass violence in seemingly peaceful hamlets like Chardon, and now Newtown.

Indeed, as I learned more about Chardon, I thought: What if a year ago, I had acted differently when those three boys, not much older than my own sons, were gunned down at their school? What if even a slice of the efforts I’ve dedicated to Sandy Hook Promise had been expended last February? What if a group like ours had formed in Chardon?

Could we have changed the course of events by asking for greater school safety measures; questioning the efficacy of mental health and wellness programs for teenagers and young adults; giving parents more tools to handle the most important undertaking of their lives; or urging legislators to insist on more robust gun regulations? If I hadn’t defined deviancy downward such that Chardon made so little difference to my consciousness a year ago, could I have helped prevent the massacre in my town.

Tussling with hypothetical questions like these is pointless. We can’t beat ourselves up for what we did not do. But as a nation, it is clear we must change. Twenty beautiful children never got off their yellow school bus to go home on Dec. 14. Six of their teachers never came home to their families. There is no excuse for inaction.

PHOTO: A memorial is seen as Chardon Local School District buses arrive for the first day of regular schedule classes since the school shootings in Chardon, Ohio March 2, 2012.REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

North Korea exasperated world powers this month with its third nuclear test. Yet media reports and Park’s campaign pledges suggest her administration will seek a softer approach toward Pyongyang than that of her predecessor, Lee Myung-bak. Although her campaign offered few specifics, her criticism of Lee’s foreign policy indicates she could walk a middle line between his administration’s hardline approach and the peaceful “Sunshine Policy” of engagement and economic assistance her opponent and human rights lawyer Moon Jae-in hoped to reintroduce.

James Schoff, a senior associate in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former senior adviser for East Asia policy at the Department of Defense, expects the president-elect to adopt something of a “Goldilocks strategy” toward North Korea. ”Not too hard and not too soft.”

“The outgoing government took a hardline vis-à-vis North Korea,” Schoff said. “They were not in any mood to be conciliatory.” According to Schoff, Park’s approach is likely to include “much more flexibility in terms of looking for opportunities to develop a new relationship with the North.”

The Lee Administration put a lid on conciliation with North Korea, blocking trade and cutting humanitarian aid. Yet this policy frayed relations on the Korean Peninsula and failed to deter North Korea from carrying out nuclear tests. Critics argue such intransigence provided an excuse for North Korea to justify its aggression.

During her campaign, Park criticized Lee’s failed policies and promised to improve relations with North Korea, creating a “trust-based” relationship. South Korean daily newspaper The Hankyoreh writes that Park “tried to contrast her own platform with Lee’s failed policies without signing on for the engagement approach favored by Roh, and by Kim Dae-jung before him.”

According to the New York Times, Park has said she would “decouple humanitarian aid from politics” and even attempt to meet with Kim Jong-un, with the caveat that “any large-scale investments be conditional on progress in ending North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.”

North Korea’s young leader won’t exactly be breaking out the Jello molds.  The hermit kingdom’s Feb. 12 nuclear test put western powers on edge and dispelled hopes that Kim Jong-un might be a more tempered leader than his father. And on Tuesday, North Korea angered participants at a U.N. conference with disturbing remarks about South Korea’s “final destruction,” one of daily warnings aimed at the South. Although it has been sixty years since the Korean War ended in a truce, South Korea is still technically at war with the North.

For Park, it’s personal. At age 22, she witnessed her mother’s assassination by a man who was aiming for her father and “acting under orders from North Korea,” Geoffrey Cain writes for Foreign Policy.

“National partition is a sorrow that touches all Koreans,” Park said before her election, according to the Washington Post, “but for me it is brought to the fore by unimaginable personal suffering.”

The New York Times illustrates her reputation for toughness with her reaction to the news of her father’s death, to which she reportedly responded, “Is everything all right along the border with North Korea?”

While serving as a member of South Korea’s National Assembly, Park wrote in a 2011 essay for Foreign Affairs magazine of her goal to adopt a policy of “trustpolitik,” or “mutually binding expectations,” on the Korean Peninsula. Park noted the failures of previous administrations’ efforts engage and deter North Korea. “The ones that have emphasized accommodation and inter-Korean solidarity have placed inordinate hope in the idea that if the South provided sustained assistance to the North, the North would abandon its bellicose strategy toward the South. But after years of such attempts, no fundamental change has come.” Governments that have pressured North Korea, however, “have not been able to influence its behavior in a meaningful way, either.”

Instead, Park advocated an “alignment policy” that would include a “tough line” some of the time and a “flexible policy open to negotiations” at others.

These measures, Time notes, include “renewal of humanitarian aid to the North and re-establishing social and cultural exchanges.”

Park’s history suggests that we can expect to see something between the current regime’s hardline approach and his predecessor’s open policy.

PHOTO: South Korea’s president-elect Park Geun-hye (C), from the ruling New Frontier Party, shouts her name with members of her election camp during a ceremony to disband the camp at the party headquarters in Seoul, December 20, 2012.  REUTERS/Jung Yeon-Je/Pool