News headlines in July 2013, page 7

WASHINGTON, Jul 23 (IPS) - The World Bank is being urged to explicitly incorporate human rights into its development lending criteria, ahead of an important discussion on the subject by its executive board on Tuesday.

CARACAS, Jul 22 (IPS) - Microfinance is essentially social, but its expansion and evolution towards diversified financial services for those who are excluded from the conventional system has compelled it to develop new codes and practices to reinforce the message that its goal is people - particularly the poor.

KUALA LUMPUR, Jul 22 (IPS) - With a propensity to devour everything in their path and spiral quickly out of control, leaving behind swathes of scorched earth, forest fires are considered a hazard in most parts of the world. In Indonesia, however, fires are the preferred method for clearing large areas of land for massive plantations of commercial crops.

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 22 (IPS) - The United Nations children's agency UNICEF released a report Monday that gives the most complete picture of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) ever published.

BUCHAREST, Jul 22 (IPS) - Future studies, like peace-development-environment studies, is an interdisciplinary, international effort to get a grip on key issues, divided into ‘preferred futures' – utopias – whose?; ‘predicted futures' – forecasting – who does it, for whom?; and ‘future practice' – scenarios bending the predicted toward the preferred – by and for whom?

NEW YORK, Jul 22 (IPS) - Ataur was 18 when he left Bangladesh and arrived in the United States in 1991 as an undocumented migrant. He took two jobs at the same time, earning about 35 dollars a day in total.

Jul 22 (IPS) - Nine of the 47 tuition-free public universities in Argentina were created in the last decade, with the aim of improving access to higher education in low-income areas. But despite the expansion and strategies to provide support for students, the drop-out rate has proven difficult to combat.

SRINAGAR, India, Jul 22 (IPS) - Twenty-three-year-old Haleema (not her real name) was not the first female patient at Srinagar's Chest Diseases Hospital in the Indian state of Kashmir to try to run away.

BLACKSBURG, Virginia, U.S., Jul 22 (IPS) - The transition team of Iran's President-elect Hassan Rouhani was busy last week lowering expectations for a quick economic recovery, saying that things are far worse than they had thought.

TORONTO, Jul 22 (IPS) - NATO member countries like Canada will be continue to be asked to shoulder the burden of a military mission stuck in Afghanistan because of the continued vulnerability of the Kabul-based government.