ENVIRONMENT-INDIA: Bird Watching to Save Habitats

A global banking and investment firm has taken an unusual route to corporate environmental responsibility: through the promotion of bird-watching.

ENVIRONMENT-INDIA: IT Hub In Acute Pollution Distress

Air pollution levels monitored by southern Karnataka state’s pollution control board (KSPCB) in this imploding southern Indian city - among Asia’s fastest-growing with an official population of 6.8 million people - have risen alarmingly over the last five years.

COLOMBIA: 131 Cities on Five Continents Join Anti-FARC Demonstration

Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated Monday in 131 cities on five continents, including more than 50 Colombian cities, to demand peace and protest against the FARC guerrillas and kidnapping.

PARAGUAY: Victims of Supermarket Fire Protest ‘Lax’ Sentences

Survivors and relatives of victims of the Ycuá Bolaños supermarket fire in Paraguay were overcome with indignation and grief at the reading of the court’s ruling on the disaster, which killed 364 people and injured over 500 in 2004.

DEVELOPMENT: South Asia Exports Sanitation Successes

Practical solutions to the global sanitation crisis will require greater knowledge-sharing among developing nations, and also even more support for those efforts by multilateral institutions like the World Bank and United Nations, experts say.

Q&A: ‘It Would Take Several Lifetimes to Save Havana’

Eusebio Leal has been involved in the restoration of the historic centre of the Cuban capital since 1967, when he began renovating the Palacio de los Capitanes Generales, now the City Museum. And while Old Havana is still his priority, he is concerned about the rest of the city, too.

MIDEAST: Garlic For My Mother

Fourteen-year-old Ahmed Salah is not sure when he can give his mother a surprise like that again.

"Where have you been?" his mother said to him after he disappeared from home the first time when the Gazan border with Egypt was breached late last month. What he brought back said just where. "See what I got you. Garlic, washing powder...and there is smoked fish!"

BOLIVIA: Dying, to Help Others Live

Italian aid worker Morris Bertozzi drowned in Bolivia trying to help a local woman cross a flooded river, just as he had worked for the last 11 years helping street children in the grip of alcohol, drugs and crime cross the bridge to a new life.

EL SALVADOR: Benefits of Free Trade Deal Still Remote

The Salvadoran government had proclaimed that from the moment of its entry into force, the free trade agreement with the United States would boost the local economy, creating thousands of jobs, so that even street vendors would be exporting their typical snacks. But nearly two years later, the economic paradise has yet to arrive.

SPAIN: Gender Equality Law Triumphs over Rightwing Opposition

Spain’s Constitutional Court issued a ruling Wednesday backing a gender equality bill, which had been challenged by the rightwing Popular Party (PP), thus clearing the way for the new law to go into effect by Saturday.

CHILE: Anti-Discrimination Bill Undermined by the Right

The Chilean Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation (MOVILH), together with members of Congress belonging to the centre-left governing coalition parties, have complained that conservative groups are attempting to water down an anti-discrimination bill.

MEXICO: Crime-Ridden City Where Anything Goes – And Frequently Does

"Keep your heads down, close your eyes and put your hands on your knees, bitches," said the man who climbed into the old taxi, holding up the couple inside at gunpoint. Seconds later another man joined him, wielding a butcher’s knife. Another armed robbery in the Mexican capital was under way.

MIDEAST: Faeces Change the Face of Gaza

A stream of dark and putrid sludge snakes through Gaza’s streets. It is a noxious mix of human and animal waste. The stench is overwhelming. The occasional passer-by vomits.

DEVELOPMENT-MALAYSIA: Civil Society Stalls Eight Billion Dollar Project

Civil society groups here are mulling their next move after having stalled a massive, private project to build close to 40 high-rise towers on a precious green lung on this land-scarce Malaysian island.

RIGHTS-CUBA: Fewer Political Prisoners, More Arbitrary Arrests – Dissidents

The number of political prisoners in Cuba fell last year, but arbitrary detentions increased, according to a report released Wednesday, by the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN).

CHINA: Beijingers Under Siege as Olympics Tempo Rises

For a city in the middle of zealous Olympics preparations a public debate over its future, set off by an academic’s call to shift the national capital out of congested and parched Beijing, has been baffling.

EDUCATION-SWAZILAND: Urban Youth Slipping Through The Cracks

As the new school year begins here many destitute or orphaned children are in need of assistance to pay for their educations. An unknown number of urban youngsters, however, are slipping through the social welfare net.

ZIMBABWE: Economy in the Red, Black Market Thriving

When you get out of your car at the Ascot shopping mall in Bulawayo, southern Zimbabwe, it is almost certain that you will soon be approached by a black market trader. Do you need soap? Are your windscreen wipers worn down?

HEALTH-SPAIN: Abortion – Education not Repression, Say Activists

Abortion clinics in Spain went on a five-day strike Tuesday to protest arrests of clinic personnel in Barcelona, the capital of the northeastern region of Catalonia.

HEALTH-US: A Million Attractions, but Nowhere to Go

When New York City banned cigarette smoking in bars and restaurants several years ago, the sardonic television host Jon Stewart pointed out that forcing smokers into the streets outside would also help mask the city's ubiquitous urine smell.

RIGHTS-US: Styling Hair, and Watching for that Telltale Bruise

When Maria, who asked that her full name not be used, began working as a New York City-area hair stylist almost 26 years ago, she had a client named "Betty" who would often show up to her appointments with serious-looking injuries.