LABOUR-BOLIVIA: Infusing Business with Youth, Innovation

Cotillones El Sol organises parties in Tarija, in southern Bolivia. Nancy Martínez, the 23-year-old manager and owner of the six-month-old company, already employs several other young women.

ECONOMY-US: Lenders Scramble as Foreclosures, Criticism Pile Up

Top U.S. lenders, faced with public and political ire over a rising flood of foreclosures, have announced stepped-up efforts to help troubled borrowers.

DEVELOPMENT: Gulf Eyes ‘Oil-For-Food’ Deal With Neighbours

Recent attempts by Gulf countries to invest in farmlands abroad to counter soaring inflation and guarantee long-term food security could prove to be a win-win situation in the short-term for both the oil-rich region and its investment-hungry neighbours, but continued high oil prices may neutralise the gains in the long-run, feel experts.

RIGHTS: Poll Finds Scant Support for Criminalising Abortion

A new poll reveals that three-quarters of respondents in 18 geographically and culturally diverse countries reject the use of criminal penalties to discourage abortions.

HEALTH-SOUTH AFRICA: Free To Go Where I Like – Life Outside a Psychiatric Hospital

The wind has picked up and blows the sand, swirling in patterns, across the dirt roads and barren yards of Madadeni township. It batters relentlessly against the walls of Joseph Gumede’s* iron shack, rattling the windows, and he has to raise his voice to be heard above the din. But sheltered from the dust storm. Joseph feels that he has at last found his way home.

DEVELOPMENT: African Agriculture Uprooted by Economic Policies

People across Africa have taken to the streets in recent months to demand that their most basic need be met: access to food. The various states in which these protests have taken place, however, have reacted swiftly and brutally.

RIGHTS-EUROPE: Parliament Votes Jail for Asylum-Seekers

In what has been described as one of the European Union's "darkest days", the European parliament has voted to allow rejected asylum-seekers be detained for up to 18 months before being deported.

SOUTH PACIFIC: Poverty Breeds Child Labour and Sex Tourism

Beyond the fabulous palm-fringed beaches and cascading waterfalls of the islands of the Pacific is a sordid reality - child labour and commercial sexual exploitation of children.

Q&A: 'Occupiers Cannot Also Be Liberal'

Support for an academic boycott of Israeli universities exposed Ilan Pappe to death threats last year, forced him to resign as senior lecturer of political science at the University of Haifa, and leave the country.

Q&A: “I Tell People How the Death Penalty Is Actually Practiced”

For over 20 years, Sister Helen Prejean, a Roman Catholic nun, has worked to educate the public about the death penalty. She has been spiritual adviser to eight death row inmates, turning her experience visiting one into the best-selling book, "Dead Man Walking". In 1995, the book was made into a film starring Susan Sarandon, winning the actress an Oscar for her performance.

MIDEAST: Cracks Widen in Israeli Cabinet

The Prime Minister and the Defence Minister are at each other's throats. The Foreign Minister and the Prime Minister are barely talking. And the Deputy Prime Minister, who wants to replace the Prime Minister, is already talking about what he might do if he does.

THEATRE-US: Welcome to the Machine

"The Adding Machine" (1923) and "Top Girls" (1983) are separated by 60 years, but both used stylised techniques to portray workers as willing slaves of capitalism. That system has destroyed them, but they haven't the consciousness to know it. And they absorb attitudes that are racist and sexist.

POLITICS: U.S. Still a Potent Influence in Asia

Despite its steady rise as a global power, China still falls behind the U.S. in its regional sway in East Asia, according to a survey of countries in the region released Tuesday.

RIGHTS-ZIMBABWE: Government Blocks Aid for Six Million In Need

Sixty-six year old Gogo Lethiwe Ncube gazes at a distant truck cruising towards the Avoca Shopping Centre in Insiza, Matabeleland South Province and starts smiling.

Q&A: 'To Recall Is to Learn'

Places that remember the Gulag across Russia and those that recall state terrorism in South America are not that different. They might find that in some ways their histories run parallel, and their role in the present time is similar.

GERMANY: Berlin Emerges as Arts Centre

Renowned for its rich assortment of music, opera and theatre life, Berlin is today the centre of the German art scene. A magnet for artists from around the world, thanks to its freewheeling lifestyle and abundance of low-cost studios, the German capital now increasingly attracts artists, international dealers and collectors.

RIGHTS-VIETNAM: Lingering Effects of Agent Orange

‘Doc’ Bernie Duff, 58, a former medic in the Vietnam War, recently led a 1,700 kilometre walk from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi to raise awareness of the problems still faced by those suffering from the effects of Agent Orange.

POLITICS: Rice Midwifes Lebanon’s Latest “Birth Pangs”

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice paid a surprise visit to Beirut Monday to pledge her support for an agreement giving greater political power to Hezbollah, the militant Shiite group that Washington still considers a terrorist organisation.

MEXICO: Mixed Reactions to Overhaul of Legal System

The Mexican government began Tuesday to usher in a series of constitutional reforms aimed at revolutionising, in eight years, the country’s opaque criminal justice system, which leaves 97 percent of all crimes unsolved and often victimises the poor. But human rights activists warn that there are risks.

Q&A: “Grand Bargain With Iran Was a Missed Opportunity”

Last week, the European Union offered Iran an incentives package to stop enriching uranium in order to initiate negotiations with the West. Mere days later, and before Tehran had responded, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that the Europeans planned to freeze the assets of Iran's largest bank in a bid to discourage Tehran from developing "nuclear weapons".

SOMALIA: Dire Situation for Internally Displaced

The United Nations estimates that well over 700,000 people have fled their homes in the Somali capital Mogadishu since clashes between insurgents and Ethiopian forces backing Somali government troops began in Mogadishu in February 2007.