News headlines in August 2011, page 16

The shelling and gunshots, once a common sound in Mogadishu, no longer ring out in the city’s streets. The surprise withdrawal on Aug. 6 of the Islamist extremist group Al Shabaab from their stronghold in Mogadishu has meant that people now move about the city, for the first time in two years, without fear of constant attack.

As the effects of accelerating climate change ripple outward, pushing millions from their land and homes, experts warn that international human rights and refugee law needs to catch up to the reality on the ground if migrants are to be given adequate protection and support.

Despite the 2.4 billion emalangeni (342 million dollar) loan from the South African government to its cash-strapped neighbour, Swaziland is sinking deeper into debt.

Nearly four years after realising her dream of changing her body into a woman's to match her transgender identity, Wendy Iriepa rode through the Cuban capital in a vintage convertible, wearing a stunning full-length white bridal gown and unfurling a rainbow flag, the symbol of the sexual diversity movement, for all to see.

The traditional knowledge of nature developed since ancestral times by Colombia’s indigenous peoples is increasingly challenged by the unnatural effects of climate change, a phenomenon that is deeply troubling to the keepers of this knowledge, says biologist Brigitte Baptiste.

The Argentine economy has grown steadily since 2003, and hundreds of thousands of social housing units have been built. Nevertheless, the protests and conflicts that periodically break out make it clear that the solutions have failed to keep up with the need for affordable housing

Ester Abeja has experienced both physical and emotional atrocities. She was captured by Uganda's feared rebel group the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and was forced to join them. But not before the soldiers made her kill her one-year- old baby girl, by smashing her skull in, and then gang raped her.

The execution of a Palestinian father and son by Hamas security forces in Gaza throws up a sharp difference over the death penalty between Gaza and the West Bank. In the West Bank a temporary moratorium in in place.

Taj Bibi’s eyes well up as she recalls the day her ten-year-old son was shot dead, a victim of the violence sweeping through the port city of Karachi since early July. 'My three sons, the 12-year-old twins and Adnan, 10, went out to play cricket in the street after lunch. Around 4 pm, the twins came running to tell me that Adnan had been shot. By the time I got there he’d breathed his last,' said Bibi, a Pashtun.

The trade union federation that ex-dictator Hosni Mubarak used to repress labour movements and mobilise regime support for sham elections during his 30-year rule has been disbanded, striking a powerful blow to the old order.