CENTRAL AMERICA: Soaring Violent Crime Threatens Democracy

Soaring violent crime rates could jeopardise democracy in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras over the next few years if only strong-arm (‘mano dura') tactics are used to fight crime and the deeper underlying causes of the violence are not addressed, experts warn.

CHILE: Pension Reform to Combat Systemic Poverty

In 20 years, even the minimum pension benefits will be out of reach for close to half of Chile's retirees. This troublesome forecast has spurred government into action, and potentially spells sweeping changes for the country's once internationally lauded privatised pension system, set up by the former dictatorship in 1981.

COLOMBIA: ‘No’ to Storm Sewer Runoff, Says Fishing Village

The residents of a picturesque fishing village in northern Colombia are up in arms against a storm drain system being built by a majority Spanish-owned water and sewage company that will serve shantytowns in the nearby port city of Santa Marta, discharging the runoff into the cove where their village is nestled.

NEPAL: Peace Won’t Stop Human Trafficking – Official

An end in sight to Nepal's bloody, 10-year internal conflict is not necessarily good news for those fighting the growing problem of trafficking in girls and women.

HEALTH-CHILE: Court Stops Free Distribution of ‘Morning After Pill’

The Santiago appeals court ruled Wednesday against the distribution of emergency contraception, or the morning after pill, to girls in Chile between the ages of 14 and 18 without parental consent.

POLITICS-UGANDA: UN Official Takes the Temperature of the Peace Process

Efforts to bring peace to northern Uganda have been highlighted over recent days during a visit to Africa by the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Jan Egeland.

RIGHTS-LIBYA: Migrants Find Vicious Circle of Deportation

The government of Libya routinely subjects migrants, asylum seekers and refugees - primarily from sub-Saharan Africa - to serious human rights abuses, including beatings, arbitrary arrests, forced returns and in some cases, torture, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released Tuesday.

MIGRATION-SPAIN: The Threat of Deportation

Immigrants who enter Spain illegally should know that they will be deported "sooner or later," Deputy Prime Minister María Teresa Fernández de la Vega warned on Tuesday, although she defended last year's amnesty for undocumented immigrants.

DRUGS-ARGENTINA: ‘Pasta Base’ Destructive but Not Invincible

It is called "the poor man's drug" and its use soared during Argentina's economic crisis of 2002. But while cocaine sulfate, a cheap drug known here as pasta base, is literally destroying young people in the slums of this South American country, it also has its middle-class and adult users.

RIGHTS-INDIA: Communist Gov’t Evicts Farmers for Industries

Peasants living on the edges of this eastern metropolis are seething in anger at the world's longest serving provincial communist government which wants them to hand over their lush green farmlands for an automobile plant being set up by the Tata group, a flag bearer of capitalist enterprise in this country.

RIGHTS-BURMA: Ethnic Minorities Starved, Denied Medical Care

To be a health worker along Burma's eastern borders, home to the Karen and Karenni ethnic communities, is to court death, injury or imprisonment, say doctors working in the area.

NEPAL: Only Half of Women Know Abortion is Legal

As the 21st century began, more women were dying during childbirth in Nepal than in almost any other country and it was estimated that half of maternal deaths in hospitals were caused by unsafe abortions.

SUDAN: Showdown Looms Over Darfur Peacekeeping

Worried that Sudanese military action in northern Darfur will unleash another round of human misery in the strife-torn region, some of the world's leading rights groups in the West are renewing calls for immediate sanctions against Khartoum.

CHILE: Closed Door for Prisoners Galvanises Mapuche Mobilisation

The Mapuche people are once again preparing to mobilise within Chile and abroad to rally support for three imprisoned community members and one activist, following Senate rejection of a long-awaited measure that would have secured their conditional release.

SCIENCE-LATIN AMERICA: Intergenerational Power Struggles

"He lacks grey hairs," argued the head of a Latin American scientific association when he blocked the promotion to the board of his institution of a young colleague who had won awards for his contributions to medical science.

MEXICO: The Myth of a Country Divided Between Left and Right

Mexico's Jul. 2 presidential elections and the subsequent standoff have left the impression of a country sharply divided between left and right, rich and poor - a perception that has taken deep root and is expanding in the midst of the ongoing crisis. But a closer look at the statistics and opinion poll results points to a much more nuanced reality.

ARGENTINA: Riachuelo Factories Must Clean Up or Close Down

In an unprecedented move, Argentina's Supreme Court held a public hearing with the aim of securing commitments from the State and private companies to live up to the clean-up plan for the Matanza-Riachuelo basin, a byword for pollution in this South American country.

DEVELOPMENT: Is Brain Drain Robbing Poor to Pay for the Rich?

The continuous flow of skilled workers and talented professionals from developing to developed nations was once described by a U.N. official as the "Robin Hood syndrome in reverse" - the rich robbing the poor.

POLITICS-JAPAN: Prince’s Birth Setback for Feminists

The birth of a royal prince on Wednesday morning has effectively suppressed a long-awaited debate on a new law, opposed by conservatives, to allow females to succeed to the imperial throne, say analysts.

HUMAN RIGHTS-ARGENTINA: Compensation for Exile

Thousands of Argentines fled the country because of political repression in the 1970s, leaving everything behind. Three decades later, a democratic Argentina is looking at how to compensate them, as it has already indemnified the relatives of the detained-disappeared, those who were abducted as young children, and former political prisoners of the military dictatorship.

RIGHTS: Italy Builds Its Own Separation Wall

'Stop the Wall', say the posters on the three-metre high metal panels that have come up to isolate the migrant estate on Anelli Road from their surroundings in Padua.