MIGRATION-CUBA: The Day the ‘Hottest Summer’ Exploded

The Caribbean Sea is calm, the temperatures perhaps slightly higher, lengthy power outages are back again and tensions with Washington still mark the beat of life in Cuba. But though much is unchanged, things are far calmer on the migration front than they were a decade ago today.

COMMUNICATION-BRAZIL: The Voices of the Homeless

"Boca de rua" is a unique newspaper, written and sold by the homeless in this city in southern Brazil, bringing together the exceptional stories of people who seek to rejoin society and reclaim their rights in adverse conditions.

SRI LANKA: Monk Parliamentarians Stir Hornets’ Nest

In the midst of the continuing debate in Sri Lanka over the moral right of the Buddhist clergy to take on politics, fresh controversy has been created by a group of Buddhist monk-MPs who have proposed laws to ban religious conversions.

POVERTY-ARGENTINA: Children First

While the government and analysts argue over the veracity of official figures that show a fall in poverty in Argentina, millions of children and adolescents are living short of food, education, healthcare and even housing.

ECONOMY-LATAM: Using Bank Accounts to Make the Most of Remittances

The 38 billion dollars in emigrant remittances sent home to Latin America and the Caribbean from abroad last year would have been more fruitful if more bank accounts had been used to send and receive the money.

IRAQ: Palestinians Go Down with Saddam

The grass has all but disappeared off what used to be the football field of the Palestinian Haifa sports club on the edge of Baghdad. After more than a year as an improvised refugee camp that at one point housed some 2,000 people, it looks sun-bleached and bent by the wind. Hardly a soul moves outside the tents during the day when the heat is most oppressive.

POLITICS: U.N. Holds Out Deadline to Stop Atrocities in Sudan

The Government of Sudan is being given a 30-day deadline to stop widespread atrocities and ethnic cleansing in Darfur province - or face possible economic and military sanctions by the United Nations.

SOCIETY-JAPAN: Rising Violent Teen Crime Worries Many

Japan's image as one of the safest countries in the world took a beating when Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi expressed strong concern about the rise in violent juvenile crime in the country.

RIGHTS-SUDAN: Pressure Builds Slowly Over Darfur

The Bush administration continues to refrain from calling a campaign of ethnic cleansing against black Africans in Sudan's western Darfur province "genocide," although both houses of the U.S. Congress approved non-binding resolutions last week that used the term to describe the situation.

AMERICAS SOCIAL FORUM: Activists Propose First-Ever Migrant Summit

Emigrant remittances sent to Latin America and the Caribbean totalled a whopping 25 billion dollars in 2002. But the money wired to families back home ''helps build houses, but breaks up families,'' said an Italian nun who has been working in Machala, a city on Ecuador's southern coast, for over a decade.

AMERICAS SOCIAL FORUM: Cultural Resistance in Festive Opening Ceremony

''Cultural resistance'' marked the huge fiesta that opened the first Social Forum of the Americas Sunday in the Ecuadorian capital, which has drawn at least 8,000 activists, united once again under the slogan ''another world is possible''.

ARGENTINA: Street Soccer World Cup Boosts Dignity for Homeless

"We players are all dreaming and none of us wants to wake up," said Alejandro Martínez, the captain of the Argentine team on its way to the second Homeless World Cup, to be held in Gothenburg, Sweden from Jul. 25 to Aug. 1.

AMERICAS SOCIAL FORUM: Indigenous People Seek Alliances

Over 10,000 people will attend the more than 300 activities scheduled for the First Social Forum of the Americas, which opens Sunday in the Ecuadorian capital.

BOLIVIA: Guarani Indians Fight to Keep Oil Company Off Their Land

The Guaraní community of Tentayapi, in southern Bolivia, one of the last bastions of the indigenous group's traditional way of life, is fighting to keep a foreign oil company out of its ancestral territory.

BOLIVIA: Indians Want Recognition of Diversity and a Share of the Wealth

Bolivia, South America's poorest country, is caught up in a state of social effervescence, with indigenous communities from the tropical eastern part of the country and the western highlands fighting for government policies that respect their cultures, languages and territories.

RIGHTS: U.S. Public Backs Force Against Sudan ‘Genocide’

Amid reports that senior officials in Sudan have directed recruitment, arming and other support to Arab militias waging a "scorched-earth" campaign against African tribes in the province of Darfur, a new poll shows U.S. citizens feel Washington should back a future United Nations declaration of "genocide" with armed force.

SOCIETY: Hungry, Homeless, and European

Elena and Dumitru Janka once lived in their own apartment in one of the many multi- storied housing blocks in Constanta, about 200 km east of capital Bucharest. For most of the last five years the couple, now in their early thirties, have been living in a tin-roofed shack on the beach.

POPULATION-U.S.: Bush Extends Jihad Against UNFPA

In what critics are calling its latest slap at women and multilateralism, the administration of U.S. President George W Bush announced Friday that the 34 million dollars Congress had earmarked for the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) will be used for other purposes.

SUDAN: Life no Better for World’s Most At-Risk People

The world's worst humanitarian crisis, in western Sudan's Darfur region, shows no sign of easing despite a number of high-profile delegations to the eastern African nation in recent weeks, says a senior aid worker who has just emerged from the area after four months.

RIGHTS: ‘Homeland Security’ Beyond U.S. Borders

In the novel '1984' George Orwell depicts a world where powerful and secretive authorities - "Big Brother" - scrutinise the intimate details of citizens' personal lives. That fiction may be closer to reality than most people think.

RIGHTS-BRAZIL: Women – Not a Mere ‘Family Appendage’

''Breaking with the traditional logic of the State, which treats women as a family appendage'' is the ambition that moves Brazil's special secretary of policies for women, Nilcea Freire, who is leading a national conference in Brasilia this week.