Slave markets are sprouting up across eastern Uganda, capitalizing on poverty and recent droughts.

When Christine Nambereke left Uganda for Oman last September, she hoped she was on her way to helping her husband and seven children fight crippling poverty. An agent had promised the 31-year-old a job as a housemaid with a monthly pay of 600,000 shillings ($168). But when she reached Muscat, she was sold as a slave. And when she returned to Uganda in early May, she was dead.

Nambereke, from Bumbo village in eastern Uganda, is among 16 Ugandans who’ve died in the Middle East over just the past year, according to a parliamentary panel report from April this year. These women — all of whom died unnatural deaths after complaining of abuse — are just the most extreme examples of a growing epidemic of an increasingly open, modern slave trade that starts in Uganda’s eastern region and culminates in closed rooms in Gulf nations.

Post-millennials are challenging the gender binary when it comes to looking for love.

When Alyssa was growing up and trying to figure out her sexuality, she was never comfortable calling herself bisexual “for whatever reason,” she says. It was only when the woman she was dating came out as trans that Alyssa started learning about pansexuality. “I immediately felt like, ‘So this is what I am,’” the 23-year-old says.

When singer and actor Janelle Monáe came out as pansexual in April of last year, “pansexual” became the most searched word of the day on Merriam-Webster.com, with an 11,000 percent increase in lookups. Celebrities like Miley Cyrus, Asia Kate Dillon and others have brought the word into the mainstream, and forums like Tumblr and Reddit are full of discussions on pansexuality.

But this openness to sexual experiences outside of traditional gay or straight norms is generational … and it could indicate a future where, for more and more people, gender isn’t a factor in their decision about whom to date.

The ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos just pledged to give half of her $36 billion fortune to charity.

When MacKenzie Bezos was just 6 years old, she wrote a 142-page book called The Book Worm. It was later destroyed in a flood, but she never gave up on her writing dreams. At Princeton, she studied under Toni Morrison, earning high praise from the literary legend, who once told Vogue that Bezos was “one of the best students I’ve ever had in my creative writing classes.”

MacKenzie went on to publish two novels, but we don’t know her as a novelist; we know her as the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. And since their split earlier this year, we know she’s one of the richest women in the world, with an estimated $36 billion net worth thanks to a 25 percent stake in Amazon. Mostly a private figure during the company’s meteoric rise, the Bezoses’ divorce has flung MacKenzie, 49, into the spotlight. This week, she added another credential to her résumé: tech philanthropist.

On Tuesday, Bezos announced she had signed the Giving Pledge, committing half of her assets — $18 billion — to charity in her lifetime or in her will. Her ex-husband, the world’s richest person, infamously declined to sign the pledge in the nine years since it was founded by acclaimed philanthropic billionaires Bill Gates, Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett. But less than two months into controlling her own fortune, Bezos signed on the dotted line.