The hour before Aung San Suu Kyi’s arrival at a human rights town hall hosted by Amnesty International Thursday wasn’t quiet. The audience chanted (“What do we want? Human rights!”). A biographic video was played. Magazines with Suu Kyi’s face on the cover were distributed. Like pre-match hype, the build up was big.

Myanmar's pro-democracy leader is not—the slight 65 year-old, with pink flowers pinned in her hair, finally appeared shortly before noon. At times, it was a strain to hear her speak, and the microphone twice switched off. But Aung San Suu Kyi is the giant of the Burmese struggle for human rights. She’s in the United States, her first visit since being released from 19 years of house arrest in 2010, for a 17-day tour.

Monday, a court in England sentenced 35-year-old Sarah Catt to eight years in prison after she pleaded guilty to administering a poison with intent to procure a miscarriage. She was 39 weeks pregnant—a point, by anyone’s measure, at which healthy fetuses are viable—when she induced labor and disposed of what she claims was a stillborn. She has yet to reveal the location of the body, which throws suspicion on her statement that the baby was born dead. Either way, the story is another example of the sad but thankfully rare occurrence of a woman giving birth in private and committing infanticide, abandoning a baby, or improperly disposing of a stillborn—though it does happen.

Two weeks ago, I heard from Andy Kopsa, an American reporter in Uganda whom I know glancingly as a colleague. While in Kampala reporting for The Washington Monthly on U.S. funding for faith-based organizations there, Kopsa found herself helping “a trans woman [who] was beaten to a pulp”—and who, Kopsa told me, had difficulty getting appropriate medical or police attention, again because she was trans. The beating was brutal, as you’ll read below. One man started it, and bystanders joined in. The police wouldn’t help. Doctors wouldn’t help. All these things are shocking to Americans. But as you will read later in this series, the only thing that stands out about this incident is that the transwoman, Mich, was willing to seek help.

While foreign policy was once thought to have taken a backseat in this election cycle, the reactions in the Muslim world to an incendiary film about the Prophet Mohammed have refocused attention on the nettlesome politics of the Middle East. Whoever occupies the White House come January will be faced with an altogether new dynamic—and not just in the obvious cases of a bloody Syrian civil war and a tottering post-Mubarak Egypt, but also with the political awakening of Muslims around the globe. Turkey, with its dual European and Asian heritage, is emerging as a key pivot in the region between the long-dominant influences of the West and an increasingly self-actualized East--just this week, it played host to negotiations hoping to slow Iran's uranium enrichment projects.

The Middle East has a propensity for producing both the tragic and the absurd, two qualities that converged in appallingly consummate fashion with the attacks this week that killed U.S. diplomats in Libya and threatened American embassies across the region.

The deaths of Christopher Stevens, U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three of his colleagues at the American consulate in Benghazi on Tuesday represent a profound tragedy on many levels. First and foremost is the loss of such brave and dedicated individuals, who served their country in a place wracked by chaos, uncertainty and violence. Stevens had a well-deserved reputation as a diplomat with a rare understanding for this complicated region, but in the tributes to his valor, let those who died with him—and the thousands of others who have served alongside them—not be forgotten. Their willingness to put their lives on the line for their country reflects their commitment to making the world a better place, something that those who would do them harm lack the capacity to recognize, much less achieve.

The wide cement walkway that separates Lafayette Park from the front lawn of the White House is the official no man’s land of Washington, D.C.—just north of it lies the rarified sphere of the West Wing, to the south of it, the banalities of life in a sedate city. On the ordinary park side, haggard West Wing staffers make private phone calls while tourists noodle back and forth happily on Segways. Wednesday evening, on the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue side of the divide, a Secret Service agent made a sweep of the front lawn with his dog at a little before 7 p.m. A flag waved at half-mast in remembrance of the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, only hours earlier that left four Americans dead; among them, Ambassador Christopher Stevens—the first American ambassador to be killed in the line of duty since 1979.

Thousands of Palestinians take to the streets. In Hebron, demonstrators burn an effigy. In Tul Karm, Ramallah, and other cities, they block streets and set tires ablaze. Teens hurl stones. All of the West Bank's bus, truck, and taxi drivers go on strike for a day. In Bethlehem, truckers park sideways, blocking streets. In Nablus, kindergarten teachers join the strike; elsewhere storekeepers shut their shops. Universities announce they, too, will strike.