RIGHTS-US: Native Americans and Immigrants Share Common Struggle

One group has lived here for millennia, while the other has just arrived. But Native Americans and immigrants have much in common, particularly the alienation and oppression they experience in U.S. society, activists and community leaders said on day three of the U.S. Social Forum (USSF) Friday.

DEATH PENALTY-MALAYSIA: Hundreds of Migrants Face Execution for Drug Crimes

Unskilled worker Henok Sibuea, 30, from Sumatra, Indonesia, gathered together his savings and, like thousands of his compatriots, paid for a boat trip across the Straits of Malacca and landed here hoping to escape poverty, get a job and send money home to his wife and four children.

RIGHTS-US: Good Enough to Serve, Not to Stay

The wife of a U.S. soldier missing in action in Iraq remains in legal limbo this week, even after the Department of Homeland security dropped deportation proceedings against her.

RIGHTS: Educating U.N. “Blue Helmets” on Gender Issues

Involving male facilitators can make educating United Nations security personnel on gender issues more effective in preventing the incidents of sexual abuse which have marred several U.N. peacekeeping operations.

AUSTRALIA: Plan to Curb Aboriginal Child Abuse Sparks Debate

Australia's federal government says its plan to protect Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory from abuse is altruistic and necessary, but a range of critics call it paternalistic, culturally insensitive and short-sighted.

SOUTH AMERICA: AIDS Meds for All, But at Higher Prices

In under a decade, programmes providing universal free access to antiretroviral medicines have greatly decreased AIDS mortality in countries like Argentina and Brazil, but this progress is now threatened by the rising prices of new formulas patented by the big pharmaceutical companies.

POPULATION: World&#39s Poor Abandon Rural Past for Big Cities

A dramatic population explosion in the world's urban centres will be the single largest influence on development in the 21st century, the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) says in a new report released Wednesday.

CHINA: Feudal Custom of Getting ‘Ghost Wives’ Far from Dead

Ghost stories might have been recently exorcised from bookshelves by Chinese censors for the horror they inflict on the public, but equally grisly tales of ‘ghost wives’ have been unfolding in real life.

ARGENTINA: Poverty Bites Deeper in the Northeast

"It just crushes you: children here, aged eight or nine, are sniffing glue to dull their hunger," says a rural medical doctor in Corrientes, 1,000 kilometres north of the capital and the province with the highest childhood poverty indicators in Argentina.

RIGHTS-BURMA: Psychological Woes Haunt Refugees

As the United Nations marks International Day of Support for Victims of Torture Wednesday, Burmese refugees who have fled violence in their own country are facing another kind of torture - not physical, but mental and psychological.

IRAN: Temporary Marriages Just a Way to Degrade Women – Critics

A key Iranian minister calls ‘temporary marriages’ a pragmatic way to deal with young people’s sexual needs and to prevent prostitution, but a wide range of critics lambasts them as little more than ways to give religious sanction to practices that degrade women.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: Child Labour Seen as Normal

The three-wheeled cart piled high with scrap metal slowly makes its way down one of the main avenues in the capital of the Dominican Republic. It is pedalled by smiling 12-year-old Julio, who with his little brother Miguel goes out every day to scour the city’s outlying neighbourhoods in search of recyclable waste, which they sell to help support their family.

COLOMBIA: Civil Resistance Aimed at Recuperating Biodiverse Lands

Indigenous and black communities of Colombia's north-western department of Chocó are trying to recover their lands and food sources, lost to the decades-long civil war that has taken its toll on this area of vast biological diversity.

Q&A: Nicaragua Is Not Likely to Meet the MDGs

Managua Mayor Dionisio Marenco does not believe that Nicaragua can meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which he describes as a wish list rather than an action plan, and underlines that his country is in need of enormous foreign investment in order to overcome its high levels of poverty.

VENEZUELA: Afro-descendants Seek Visibility in Numbers

As their counterparts in other countries of Latin America have begun to do, Afro-Venezuelans want to stop being statistically invisible, and are seeking more precise figures to help them in their struggle against racism and marginalisation.

THAILAND: Worries Rise over Continued Arrivals by North Koreans

Some may be sympathetic to desperate North Koreans who make their way through the Mekong River what they hope is a path to freedom, but their continued arrivals are a cause for worry for locals and Thai officials.

MALAYSIA: Domestic Worker’s Escape Puts Spotlight on Abuses

A dramatic escape by an Indonesian domestic worker from her abusive employer has sparked a national outcry after millions of Malaysians watched the incident live on television last week.

SPAIN-PORTUGAL: Binational Village Wants to Be Simply ‘European’

This tiny village of 109 people straddles the border between Portugal and Spain. On one side are the 50 houses of Rio de Onor de Braganza and on the other are the 20 houses of Ríohonor de Castilla. But the locals feel they are one community, and they want their hometown to be declared the first simply "European" village.

COSTA RICA: Sanctuary for Colombian Refugees

People fleeing Colombia receive protection and assistance in Costa Rica. But integration is difficult, and the refugees continue to face threats from paid killers sent from the war-torn country they fled.

LATIN AMERICA: Black Women on the Bottom Rung

There are at least 75 million black women in Latin America and the Caribbean, but those who occupy high-level political or public administration posts number less than 50. As activists pointed out to IPS this week, black women are at the very bottom of the social ladder in this region.

TURKEY: Into the Iraq Quagmire?

Turkey is beefing up military preparedness against Iraq-based Kurdish rebels as a prelude to a possible cross-border incursion that is opposed by the United States, European Union and the Iraqi government.