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As if to underscore GOP efforts at outreach to female voters, a breakout session of the Republican National Committee's latest "rising stars" at the group's winter meeting Thursday in Washington, D.C., entirely comprised young women.

There were Alex Smith, a law school student who is the first woman elected national chair of the College Republicans in its 120-year history; Chelsi P. Henry, an African-American conservative activist who grew up on welfare; Kimberly Yee, an Asian-American state senator from Arizona; Monica Youngblood, a Latina New Mexico state representative; and Alison Howard, communications director of the Concerned Women for America.

The GOP's own officials have increasingly faulted its leadership for lacking the kind of diversity and positive message that would attract women, younger voters and minorities. And almost as though he was there to prove the need for such new voices, Thursday's RNC luncheon speaker — radio host, 2008 presidential candidate and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee — caused an Internet ruckus with this controversial comment:

"If the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control, because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it."

Since the Korean War, which ended in 1953, no American has been imprisoned in North Korea as long as 45-year-old Korean-American missionary Kenneth Bae.

Bae was arrested in November 2012 and later convicted for supposedly attempting to overthrow the state through a plot called Operation Jericho, described in videotaped sermons.

On Monday, at a rare press conference in Pyongyang, Bae called for American diplomats to help secure his release, a development signaling the regime could be open to talks with Washington.

Washington has offered to send U.S. Ambassador Robert King to Pyongyang, Voice of America has reported, citing an anonymous White House official.

"Obama has been persistent with his hands-off policy towards North Korea," said Leonid Petrov, a researcher at Australian National University. "Kim is using Bae as a decoy for the dialogue. Now all eyes are on Obama. The ball is in his court."

Sending an envoy to plea for the release of an American is a familiar scenario for the U.S. government. In recent years, a handful of U.S. citizens have been detained or imprisoned in the garrison state, some under circumstances similar to Bae's: Korean-American missionaries accused of proselytizing and, as authorities say, undercutting North Korean sovereignty.

Here are five other Americans who've landed behind bars — and managed to win freedom.

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A cease-fire deal has been reached between the government of the nascent country of South Sudan and rebel forces to end five weeks of fighting that has claimed more than 10,000 lives.

NPR's Gregory Warner, reporting from Bukavu, in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, says the agreement signed in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, on Thursday for a country-wide cease-fire marks a breakthrough in peace talks that stalled for weeks over the fate of 11 political prisoners under house arrest by the South Sudanese government.

The government and the rebels agreed to an amnesty for the prisoners, but they still must first stand trial.

NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton says that the cessation of hostilities should allow the world's youngest nation to catch its breath, in a bid to restore peace. She says:

"Five weeks of warfare erupted in mid-December in South Sudan, after tension and a political tug-of-war between President Salva Kiir and his erstwhile deputy, Riek Machar."

"After weeks of stop-start negotiations between the two sides, brokered by the regional mediators the signing ceremony is the first real evidence of progress."

Binyavanga Wainaina is one of Kenya's best-known writers. Now he is one of the most prominent figures in Africa to announce that he's gay.

Wainaina did so on Saturday, his 43rd birthday, in a piece posted on several websites, called, "I Am A Homosexual, Mum."

The title comes from a conversation he imagined, but did not have, with his mother back in 2000, when she was dying in a Kenyan hospital from complications related to diabetes.

In reality, Wainaina was living in South Africa at the time and did not make it back to Kenya before his mother died. He never told her he was gay.

But in his piece, he writes, "I, Binyavanga Wainaina, quite honestly swear I have known I am a homosexual since I was five."

He followed that up with a series of YouTube videos, called "We Must Free Our Imaginations," posted on Tuesday.

His declaration comes at a time when a number of African countries are enacting strict anti-gay laws on a continent that has long discriminated against gays.

Homosexual acts are illegal in Kenya. Uganda and Nigeria recently passed legislation that has been widely criticized by human rights groups. In Nigeria, the president signed the measure into law. In Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni refused to sign the law, citing technical reasons, then went on to call homosexuality an "abnormality."

Speaking on NPR's Tell Me More on Thursday, Wainaina said he decided to come out because, "I wanted to generate a conversation among Africans."

"If you're ready to share, you are ready to share," he said. "So I was ready to share."

In 2011, Wainaina's father was dying. And as with his mother, Wainaina regretted not telling him about being gay.

"Sometimes I feel like your parents are hostage to you much more than you are hostage to them, and so, the fear of sort of, wounding them, for me, I think, was a big thing," he said. "But then, this is the opportunity to test their hearts the way I didn't give myself the opportunity to test their hearts."

Wainaina also said he contemplated coming out while working on a memoir called One Day I Will Write About This Place (published in the U.S. by Grey Wolf Press). He didn't do so, but with all the attention focused on the recent laws in Uganda and Nigeria, he felt the time was right.

"While finishing (the book), I'd really kind of contemplated talking about being gay, and then I thought, in that kind of, sort of, writerly way 'Oh my God, I don't think my language is ready or lyrical enough to start talking about' that sort of thing. So I was finding reasons and excuses for a long time, but I think sometimes you're just ready. So I feel like I kind of did this because there's a lot going on in Nigeria with the new laws and so on, but really, in a certain way, by the time I was hitting that 'send' button to my friends to put it up on platforms, I felt, this is one of the most successfully put together and honest pieces I've ever written."