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Last month, al-Shabab militants hijacked a bus carrying sixty passengers in northern Kenyan. They shot dead 28 men and women because they were not Muslims. Headteacher Douglas Ochwodho Ondari was on that bus, travelling with his wife when the attack took place. He survived, but his wife was killed. He recalls what happened.

Ninety-five-year-old Polan Sarkar has spent his life trying to get illiterate villagers in Bangladesh to read books. Growing up in an illiterate family, and only managing to complete four years of school, he used his earnings from working as a tax collector to buy books for the poor. Now he has a library named after him in his village and has won awards for his work. Polan still walks many miles a day handing out books to people living near his home in Bausa.

Australian Aminah Hart's daughter Leila was conceived using a sperm donor. Aminah later tracked down the father online, fell in love - and now she is engaged to marry him. His name is Scott Anderson. Previous to having Leila, Aminah had had two sons who both died from a hereditary illness.

Last week the parliament in Finland voted to legalise same-sex marriage. Gay couples in the country now have the same rights as anyone else to share a surname and adopt children. At the forefront of the campaign to bring about equal rights has been 37-year-old rising star of Finnish politics, Jani Toivola. He is the country's first ever black member of parliament and is openly gay. His journey to rediscover his roots in Kenya has invited comparisons with US President Barack Obama.

Pioneering Pakistani rock climber Nazia Parveen has made history by becoming the first Pakistani woman to compete in international rock climbing contests. She represented her country in the two-day International Rock Climbing Competition in Singapore earlier this year. She only took up climbing four years ago, when she was on a trip with her university.

(Photo: Douglas Ochwodho Ondari, Polan Sarka and the Hart family
Picture Credits: Michael Kaloki; Eliza Beveridge; Aminah Hart)