News headlines in August 2011, page 4

Rania was 16 years old when officials raped her during Saddam Hussein’s 1991 crackdown in Iraq’s Shia south. 'My bothers were sentenced to death, and the price to stop this was to offer my body,' she says.

The more than 1.2 million microenterprises operating in Colombia are responsible for around 50 percent of all employment. And many of these small businesses owe their existence to the microfinance system, according to a report by Visión Económica, a local business research group.

Concern is growing for the mental health of thousands of people locked up indefinitely in this country’s immigration detention system.

For the majority of the world’s population, citizenship is a fact of life, something so fundamental that the idea of not being citizen to any state seems unfathomable. Yet for 12 million people worldwide, ordinary life as most people expect it is impossible because they belong to no country and are thus deprived of basic rights.

The first-ever audit of the U.S. Federal Reserve has revealed 16 trillion dollars in secret bank bailouts and has raised more questions about the quasi-private agency’s opaque operations.

Thousands have been caught in the Libyan fighting — people neither with Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s forces, or with the rebels. Ayman Agamy Abdelgawad, an Egyptian released from Tripoli’s Abdu Selim prison, shares his experiences with IPS. He narrates his experience below:

Rania was 16 years old when officials raped her during Saddam Hussein’s 1991 crackdown in Iraq’s Shia south. 'My bothers were sentenced to death, and the price to stop this was to offer my body,' she says.

Experts and activists are calling for the reinstatement of the ban on casinos in Mexico, saying they foment not only problem gambling but also links to organised crime. The debate was revived after at least 52 people were killed in a fire set by armed men in the Casino Royale in Monterrey.

The more than 1.2 million microenterprises operating in Colombia are responsible for around 50 percent of all employment. And many of these small businesses owe their existence to the microfinance system, according to a report by Visión Económica, a local business research group.

A small group of inter-connected foundations, think tanks, pundits, and bloggers is behind the 10-year-old campaign to promote fear of Islam and Muslims in the U.S., according to a major investigative report released here Friday by the Center for American Progress (CAP).