ENVIRONMENT-CHILE: Town of Alhue Goes Green

Time seems to have stopped in Alhué. The dirt roads, colonial history and low-key activity in this sleepy Chilean farming town of 4,500 make it hard to remember that downtown Santiago is just two hours away.

LABOUR-MALAYSIA: Death of a Migrant Worker

He died a lonely death in a budget hotel room in downtown George Town earlier this month, far away from home. The death went unreported in the local media and unnoticed by most Malaysians.

FRANCE: Immigrants Uneasy over Proposed Policies

In his successful bid to lead the country this past spring, French President Nicolas Sarkozy made reform of the country's immigration system a centrepiece of his campaign, at one point telling a news conference that France was "exasperated by the dispute about national identity and by uncontrolled immigration."

ARGENTINA: Psychiatric Patients’ Radio Station Up in the Air

La Colifata was the first radio station in the world to broadcast live from a psychiatric hospital, and has played a key role in the reinsertion of patients in the community. But now the Argentine station, which has inspired the creation of around 40 similar stations in Latin America and Europe, has run out of financing.

BOLIVIA: Disenfranchised 2.5 Million Soon to Have the Vote

Bolivia's lower house of Congress is working hard to approve a draft law that would grant citizens living abroad the right to vote in time for next year's referendum on the new constitution being drafted by a constituent assembly.

RIGHTS-MALAYSIA: Human Trafficking Charges Stick – Activists

Nothing could be more intolerable for Malaysia than to be lumped together with Burma, North Korea and Iran. But the United States has done precisely that, naming Malaysia among "worst offenders" in human trafficking, bonded labour, sex trade and child prostitution.

HEALTH: Commonwealth Event Debates Why AIDS Wears “the Face of a Woman”

The issue of women continuing to be at higher risk of HIV infection than men has received considerable attention at a gathering of women's affairs ministers from Commonwealth countries underway in Uganda's capital, Kampala.

AGRICULTURE-BRAZIL: David, Goliath and Land Reform

The largest movement fighting for the distribution of unproductive rural property to landless peasant farmers in Brazil complains that the "euphoria" over the production of biofuels from sugar cane and other crops is aggravating the concentration of land ownership and driving up land prices.

RIGHTS-AUSTRALIA: Too Little, Too Late for Lost Generation Aborigines

A decade after the release of the landmark 'Bringing Them Home Report' on the forced removal of indigenous children from their families - known as the Stolen Generations - the situation for indigenous Australians remains desperate.

BOLIVIA: Not Another 500 Years of Marginalisation, Say Indigenous Leaders

"We prefer to defend our rights with bloodshed and die rather than wait another 500 years," says Esperanza Huanca, a Quechua Indian who is one of the 84 women in the constituent assembly that is rewriting Bolivia's constitution.

LABOUR-ARGENTINA: Informal Economy Just Won’t Shrink

The Argentine economy has been growing steadily for over four years, and unemployment has fallen 14 percent in that period. However, experts say that nearly half of all jobs are precarious and/or of poor quality.

PARAGUAY: Shooting Ranges, Munitions Depots Within City Limits

The humble dwellings of the Varadero neighbourhood in the Paraguayan capital still show signs of the devastating explosion that occurred three years ago in a navy arsenal located within a residential area.

SRI LANKA: Gov&#39t in Serious Image Crisis

"Somewhere in the jungles of Vanni (northern Sri Lanka), Velupillai Prabhakaran (Tamil Tiger rebel leader) is rubbing his hands in glee. The actions of the Sri Lankan government during the last week, however quickly reversed, best served his interests, and his alone," 'The Nation' commented in its Sunday editorial.

ENVIRONMENT-MEXICO: Emigration a Blessing for Biosphere Reserve

Pressure on natural resources and biodiversity in Mexico's Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve has been reduced as a result of the emigration of half its human inhabitants - some 50,000 people - to the United States.

ENVIRONMENT-RWANDA: Unhappy Ending of a Welcome Return

The return in 1996 of over a million Rwandans who had fled their country in the wake of genocide two years earlier, fearing persecution at the hands of Tutsi rebels who took control of Rwanda, was greeted with relief in many quarters.

BOLIVIA: Safe Abortion Nearly Impossible Even in Cases of Rape

Bolivia's constituent assembly has just two months left to finishing rewriting the country's constitution. In 10 months of sessions, it has approved a single article, regarding the right to hold football matches at high altitudes, in response to the International Football Federation's (FIFA) ban on high-altitude international matches.

SRI LANKA: Court Stays Eviction of Tamils From Capital

The nationalist government of President Mahinda Rajapakse received a rap on the knuckles from the country's apex court Friday when it ordered a stop to the indiscriminate deportation of ethnic Tamils from the national capital to their homes in the island's north and east.

BRAZIL: Water Sources Threatened by Lack of Low-Cost Housing, Sanitation

José Carlos Bezerra knows that the sewage from his house flows directly into the Guarapiranga reservoir, the source of water for millions of people in Brazil's largest city. But what can he do, he asks, if he can't afford to live anywhere but in this slum?

RIGHTS: Geneva Convention Laws Gain Relevancy

A child sitting in the rubble of a bomb blast in Azerbaijan, a mother in Yemen receiving a Red Cross message from her son in Guantanamo Bay, war-wounded patients in Pakistan, a reunited Timor-Leste family and people looking for missing family members in Guatemala.

MEDIA: Young Journalists Explore What It Means to Be Muslim in Italy

With the help of a new monthly magazine, 'Yalla Italia' (Come On, Italy), some young second-generation Egyptian, Moroccan and Tunisian immigrants are attempting to explore and address the stereotypes considered an obstacle to their full integration in this predominantly Catholic European country.

COLOMBIA-ECUADOR: ‘There Are No Plants or Animals Left’

A new U.S. government report acknowledges that coca crops expanded last year in Colombia, despite the heavy herbicide spraying carried out under Plan Colombia, which has been loudly protested by neighbouring Ecuador for causing damages to human and animal health and food crops in border areas.