What's Up with the Hijab?

Today while surfing the net, I saw a lot of articles on Hijab, I don't quite understand the story, I didn't even know what Hijab was until I Googled it. So how did the whole saga start? How come our government suddenly took interest in this? I thought Muslim women have been wearing the Hijab for a long time? What's going on? Government don't allow them to wear anymore? Curious, there's just too many articles on it for me to ignore, I wonder what's going on.