I have a story in this week’s magazine about the 20 Senate women and their growing—and positive—influence on the Upper Chamber. You can credit the tight, bipartisan bonds that these women have formed for not only seeding the compromise that reopened the government, but the vast majority of the legislation passed this session.

With the federal government at shutdown's door, the 20 female Senate members are setting new standards for civility and bipartisanship. Look out, old boys' club.

Nigeria has committed itself to accelerate the national and regional implementation of relevant UN Security Council resolutions, especially on women, peace and security, Women Affairs Minister Zainab Maina has said.

Maina disclosed this when she addressed member states during the Third Committee of the 68th Session of the UN General Assembly in New York on Friday.

"Nigeria is making progress in implementing resolution 1325 as follow-up of the regional workshop on the resolution that took place in Dakar, Senegal, in April 2013.

Some say history repeats itself. In 2004, UNDP issued what I believe is one of the best of its global Human Development Reports, Managing Cultural Diversity. The report argued that managing cultural diversity is one of the central challenges of our time and that policy choices about recognizing diverse ethnicities, religions, languages and values “are an inescapable feature of the landscape of politics in the 21st century.”

Myanmar needs to change its constitution as fast as possible to put the country firmly on the path to democracy, Nobel Peace Prize winner and leader of the country's democratic opposition Aung San Suu Kyi said on Tuesday.

Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) won a landslide victory in last year's parliamentary by-elections, giving her a seat in parliament.

But the 68-year old faces a tough challenge to have the constitution changed to push on with reforms and to allow her to run for presidency in 2015.