Mali: US asylum courts mishandled gender violence case

A woman who was denied asylum in the U.S. despite her fears that she would suffer additional female genital mutilation if she was deported to her native Mali has been given a second chance. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey - whose intervention was sought in a national campaign by women's and human rights groups has reversed a ruling by a federal immigration board that acknowledged that the woman's genitals had been cut as a child but said that while "reprehensible", the mutilation could not be repeated.