KURIGRAM, Bangladesh, Oct 29 (IPS) - Jahanara Begum, a 35-year-old housewife, is surrounded by thatched-roof homes, all of which are partially submerged by floodwater.

DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania, Oct 29 (IPS) - "You cannot continue with your education. You have to get married because this man has already paid dowry for you," Matilda H's father told her. Matilda, from Tanzania, was 14 and had just passed her primary school exams and had been admitted to secondary school. She pleaded with her father to allow her to continue her education, but he refused.  

WASHINGTON, Oct 29 (IPS) - Officials in Panama have fined the local facility of a U.S. biotechnology company for a series of permitting and regulatory failures around a pioneering attempt to create genetically modified salmon.

AMUDA, Syria, Oct 28 (IPS) - There was never anything particularly remarkable about this northern town of 25,000. However, today it has become the lab for one the most pioneering political experiments ever conducted in the entire Middle East region.

GUATEMALA CITY, Oct 28 (IPS) - On Oct. 14, Guatemala's Court for High-Risk Crimes ruled that charges would be brought against two members of the Army for sexual slavery and domestic slavery against q'eqchís women in the military outpost of Sepur Zarco, and other serious crimes perpetrated in the framework of the government counterinsurgency policies during the armed conflict.

MÁLAGA, Spain, Oct 28 (IPS) - "It's easy to end up on the street. It's not because you led a bad life; you lose your job and you can't afford to pay rent," says David Cerezo while he waits for lunch to be served by a humanitarian organisation in this city in southern Spain.

WASHINGTON, Oct 28 (IPS) - U.S. and Iranian negotiators are working on a compromise approach to the issue of Iran's uranium enrichment capabilities, which the Barack Obama administration has said in the past Iran was refusing to make concessions on.

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 28 (IPS) - More senseless bombing of Muslims, more defeats for the United States-West, more ISIS-type movements, more West-Islam polarisation. Any way out?

SYDNEY, Oct 28 (IPS) - The viability of reopening the controversial Panguna copper mine in the remote mountains of Central Bougainville, an autonomous region in the east of Papua New Guinea, has been the focus of discussions led by local political leaders and foreign mining interests over the past four years.

BONN, Oct 27 (IPS) - China and the United States are responsible for 35 percent of global carbon emissions but could do their part to keep climate change to less than two degrees C by adopting best energy efficiency standards, a new analysis shows.