Blog Posts by Beth Greenfield, Shine Staff

Taj Mohammad and his daughter, Naghma, at right. Photo: Bryan Denton/The New York Times/ReduxA 6-year-old Afghan girl sold by her father into an impending marriage to pay off a family medical debt got a reprieve Monday: She will now get to stay with her parents, thanks to an anonymous donor who is paying off the debt of $2,500 through an American lawyer, according to a still-developing New York Times report.

More on Shine: Child Bride Has Marriage Annulled. Laxmi Sargara is Our Hero of the Day.

The girl, Naghma, wound up being bartered by father Taj Mohammad after he borrowed the $2,500 from a fellow refugee-camp resident over the course of a year. The money was to pay for a hospital treatment for his wife and medical care for some of his nine children, including a three-year-old who later froze to death. If he couldn’t pay it off in another year, Naghma would be forced to wed the lender’s 17-year-old son.

More on Yahoo!: Afghan Child Bride's In-Laws Sentenced for Torture

“They said, ‘Pay back our money,’ and I didn’t have any money, so I had to give my girl,” Mohammad told the

Read More »from Afghan Girl, 6, Rescued from Child Bride Fate; Countless Others not so Lucky

Photo: Getty Images/Spencer PlattEven earning a six-figure income is apparently not enough to ease the fear, among a whole lot of women, of winding up destitute and alone. That’s according to the 2013 “Women, Money and Power and Study” by Allianz Life, released this week, which found that 49 percent of those surveyed had a deep-down fear of becoming a “bag lady,” with more than a quarter of those women making $200,000 or more a year.

“For women, money is often seen as a finite thing,” Eleanor Blayney, consumer advocate for the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, told Yahoo! Shine. Even though it’s no longer true that women must figure out how to survive on the money that men dole out to them, she said, there could be a bit of that residual anxiety in our cultural DNA. “Men are cultured a little bit differently around that,” she noted. “They have more of a sense of, well, when it runs out, you go out and make more.”

For the research, Allianz surveyed 2,200 nationally representative women aged 25 to 75 with

Read More »from Even Financially Successful Women Fear Becoming "Bag Ladies," New Study Finds

Terry Bennett at his computer. Photo: SWNS.comConvicted UK pot dealer Terry Bennett, 32, was just sentenced to the grown-up version of writing “I will not chew gum in class” on the chalkboard 100 times. He must pen a 5,000-word essay about the dangers of cannabis by April 4—or spend a year in jail.

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“It was a shock to be given such an unusual punishment. It’s been ages since I last wrote an essay,” Bennett, who was caught with just over two pounds of marijuana and admitted his intent to sell it, told the UK newspaper the Mirror.

More on Yahoo!: For Investors, Marijuana Remains a Cloudy Bet

“I think it’s good in a way because it gives me a chance to express my opinion about the crime that I’ve committed,” he added in a video interview with SWNS. “And it also gives me more of an understanding of why the crime’s illegal, because I’m having to actually do the research.”

Bennett’s original sentence from Bristol Judge Julian Lambert, given in

Read More »from Pot Dealer in UK Gets Sentenced to Write 10-Page Essay

Women in Alaska—17 percent of whom are Alaska native or Native American—get a raw deal. Photo: Getty Images/Gilles MingassonA newly issued Alaska State Legislature report held some grim findings about women living in the Last Frontier: They earn less than men, were imprisoned at a higher rate during the past 10 years, and have a suicide rate that’s twice the national average, among other problems, including homelessness and a lack of health care.

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“Some of the numbers are shocking and disturbing. Sadly, some of them are what I expected,” noted Senator Lesil McGuire (R-Anchorage) in a press release about the report, which was completed by Alaska Legislative Research Services in December but only made public Tuesday at the senator’s request. “That’s why it is important for us to figure out what’s behind these numbers and come up with solutions which make Alaska better for our daughters and granddaughters.”

More on Yahoo!: Police Say Little Doubt Alaska Woman was Abducted

Senator McGuire requested the Status of Women Report after reviewing a 2010 Alaska

Read More »from Is Alaska the Worst State in the Nation for Women?

Cate Edwards with dad John. Photo: Getty Images/Sara D. DavisWhen Cate Edwards, the eldest daughter of former presidential candidate John Edwards and the late Elizabeth Edwards, spoke out about her father’s highly publicized affair with Rielle Hunter for the first time this week, she shared her emotions in ways both forthcoming and gracious.

“I was devastated. And I was disappointed,” the 31-year-old attorney and author tells Savannah Guthrie of the Today show in an interview set to air in full on Friday. “I mean, these are my parents. I had grown up with a lot of love in my family. And it was hard to see them go through this.”

When Guthrie asked her if she was angry, Edwards replied, “Yeah, yeah, of course.” 

She is far from alone in dealing with cheating parents, of course, with various statistics saying that anywhere from a quarter to 60 percent of married folks will engage at some point in infidelity. And children of dabbling politicians are also not terribly hard to come by, though all have dealt with it in very different ways.

Chelsea

Read More »from Cate Edwards isn't alone: Dealing with dads who cheat

Baby George. Photo: YouTube via BBCA new mom in England got the shock of her life when the she gave birth to her son George six weeks ago—and he came out weighing a whopping 15 pounds 7 ounces.

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“He’s a little miracle—well, a big miracle, really,” Jade King, who birthed George vaginally, told the BBC.

No one realized just how big George was until his head had emerged, at which point his shoulders got temporarily stuck and he went without oxygen for five minutes.

“There was about 20-odd doctors in the room, and that’s when it got really scary,” King recalled.

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Once the baby was out, he was given a 10 percent chance of survival and transferred from Cheltenham to another hospital, in Bristol. He was kept there for four and a half weeks and then went home, and just received normal results from an MRI.

“It might just be that he’s a little big slow with his learning,” his mom added. “So hopefully

Read More »from 15-Pound Baby Doing Well After Scary Birth

Wolfe, left, and Gosk. Photo: Getty Images/NBCToday show anchor Jenna Wolfe announced on air Wednesday that she was five months pregnant—and simultaneously came out to the world when she added, “My girlfriend Stephanie Gosk and I, who works here at NBC, we’re expecting a baby girl in the end of August.”

The way the news was delivered—with a backdrop of day two at the Supreme Court gay marriage hearings, and in an interesting blend of scripted, awkward, but ultimately no-big-deal happy banter between Wolfe, Matt Lauer, Savannah Guthrie and Al Roker—was a far cry from the on-air coming out of another lesbian host, Ellen DeGeneres, 16 years ago. It coincided with a profile of the expecting Wolfe and Goske in the latest issue of People, which hit stands Wednesday. (And it was nice break from the ongoing Lauer-Ann Curry drama, which continues to make headlines.)

“Stephanie’s extremely adventurous, she’s been all over the world. You know me, there’s not a building I haven’t jumped off of,” Wolfe said during her announcement. “For us this Read More »from Meet the Today Show’s New Pregnant Power Couple: Jenna Wolfe and Stephanie Gosk

A gay-marriage supporter in San Francisco Monday. (Getty Images)OK, so while countless gay couples wait—in some cases for many decades, their lives and families held in the balance—Supreme Court Justices are freaking out about moving too fast. The New York Times reported that some expressed a sort of “buyer’s remorse” about the hearings Tuesday, with Justice Alito feeling the need to give a little history lesson.

“You want us to step in and assess the effects of this institution, which is newer than cellphones and/or the Internet?” he asked, urging caution in a ruling.

Hmm. The Internet was introduced to the public by UCLA in 1969. And the mobile phone was invented by Martin Cooper in 1973.

So, by Alito's bizarre logic, that must mean the concept of gay marriage—the mere fact of same-sex lovers entering into a commitment and living together as partners—must have been invented some time in the ’70s. Right?

Now it's time for our history lesson, in brief, easy-to-digest timeline format:

"A Very Long Engagement" via YouTube.1970: Minnesota couple Jack Baker and Michael McConnell tried to

Read More »from Supreme Court Justice Says Gay Marriage Newer Than Cell Phones and the Internet. We Say, Huh?