News headlines in August 2011, page 7

Four months before 2012 - the year a conference is slated to be held on freeing the Middle East region of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) - no date, facilitator, or host country has been named.

While some Muslim Americans might have been hoping for a relaxation of the decade-long counterterrorism onslaught on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, a report published by the Associated Press - unearthing new and shocking realities on the extent of intelligence-gathering operations in New York City - suggests that the offensive on 'terror' is only just beginning.

Armed with a smile, Don Marut exposes the pitfalls of Western aid to developing countries. At a conference here, the Indonesian recalled the story of how 40 electric-train carriages were sent from Germany to his country for a journey to nowhere.

At the height of Iraq’s sectarian war in 2006, 30-year-old Samer escaped his Baghdad neighbourhood to join a flood of refugees arriving in Syria. A young man of military age, he was at high risk of being targeted by armed forces that roamed the capital’s streets.

Marguerite Kassa feared she would find herself alone in the small crowd of a dozen other pregnant women at the integrated health centre in Mossendjo, in the southwestern Republic of Congo. 'I am six months pregnant already, but I hesitated to come here before now, because there is so much contempt for us,' the thirty-year-old indigenous woman tells IPS. 'Yet I was warmly welcomed.'

Eighty thousand tiny houses dot the countryside near this coastal city, located just west of the epicentre of the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake that killed some 200,000 and displaced over one million.

Egypt’s most organised political group, the Muslim Brotherhood, is tapping crowds as a new financing method for its nascent TV station and media outlets to be able to compete with well-oiled challengers in corporate and government- run media.

As NATO-backed rebels continue efforts to secure Tripoli from forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi, analysts here are already debating whether the apparently successful uprising in Libya offers a precedent for future action elsewhere.

'We grabbed all these weapons from Gaddafi's compound just before NATO shelled the whole place,' says rebel fighter Massud Askar in downtown Nalut. The 50-year-old rebel displays an Italian light semi-automatic rifle in his right hand and a hand grenade in the other.

The lack of regulations for consulting indigenous communities in Bolivia on initiatives that affect their territories is at the heart of a dispute over a road to facilitate traffic from Brazil, which would run through an enormous tropical national park self-governed by indigenous communities.