MIDEAST: Raze Illegal Buildings – Unless They Are Jewish

Backed by armed security men, the municipal inspectors race their jeeps through the narrow alleyways and up a hillside crowded with buildings.

EUROPE: Privatised Services Back in Public Hands

After the wave of de-privatisation of water services facilities that started across the world two years ago, municipalities in Europe are now buying back the electricity utilities they sold to private investors in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

RECESSION AND RECOVERY: Cities Going One Way, Nations Another – Part 2

Some signs are emerging of a new trend shown up by the recession: local governments (and the people) are going one way, national ones another.

CULTURE-INDIA: Globalised Ice Cream Please, Big Scoop

"Passport Please." That's what everyone thought they'd ask if you queued up at that exclusive new ice cream shop in one of those smart new malls of fashionable south Delhi.

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: Talk vs Action – the Tug-of-War Continues

A call issued by social movements to evolve towards a more active role in generating concrete action marked the opening session of a seminar assessing the 10 years of the World Social Forum (WSF) Monday in this southern Brazilian city, the birthplace of the annual global civil society gathering.

CUBA: Wendy – Reconciling the Inner and Outer Image

It was as if she had only closed her eyes for a moment. When Wendy Iriepa came round after surgery over a year ago, she tried to get up as if nothing had happened, but a nurse gently pushed her back into bed. "All done?" she asked, and the nurse replied, "Yes."

RIGHTS-INDIA: Shelter for the Homeless amid Big Chill

Happiness for Alok and Saddam is the bare canvas tent set up in the middle of a grassy traffic island close to Delhi Gate, the entrance to the old quarter of India’s capital.

CHILE: Eliminating Slums

Chile, touted as Latin America's great economic success story, has gone a long way towards reducing poverty and eliminating the country's slums. But a new study shows that disadvantages are still faced by 50,000 children living in shantytowns.

URUGUAY: From Open Sewer to Green Parkway

For decades, the Miguelete, the main waterway running through the Uruguayan capital, was a virtual open sewer that the capital had turned its back on, along with its past as the site of the traditional Sunday promenade in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

DEVELOPMENT: Afro-Uruguayan Women Find Their Own Way Home

Contrary to popular belief in Uruguay, the capital city’s black population is no longer concentrated in neighbourhoods like Barrio Sur, Palermo and Cordón, which were historically home to the majority of African descendents and remain heavily steeped in Afro-Uruguayan culture.

MEDIA-ARGENTINA: Fighting Stereotypes of Slums ‘From the Inside’

A group of local residents from Villa 1-11-14, a slum on the outskirts of the Argentine capital, put out a magazine aimed at breaking down the stereotypes propagated by the mainstream media, which associate neighbourhoods like theirs only with drugs, crime and marginalisation.

PERU: Women Workers Forced into Informal Economy

In Peru, 51 percent of all jobs are generated by the informal economy, a sector that has a female face, as more than 60 percent of the women workers in the country are forced into informality, with only 15 percent having health coverage and a mere four percent enjoying retirement benefits.

U.S.: Katrina Lawsuit Raises Broader Questions About Levee Safety

Since a federal judge ruled earlier this month that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was responsible for the devastating 2005 levee breach at the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO) in Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina, some legal scholars believe that millions – or even billions - could be owed to additional Hurricane Katrina victims.

BRAZIL: Crack Epidemic – Yet another Tough Nut to Crack in War on Drugs

J. ran away from home - a shack in a "favela" or shantytown in Brazil - when he was just eight years old, after he realised that the money he begged for in the streets was spent by his violent father on alcohol and drugs. He became a street urchin, as his two older brothers - with whom he lost contact long ago - had already done.

EL SALVADOR: More Troops on the Streets to Fight Crime

José, a 46-year-old street vendor in the Salvadoran capital, says he is happy that the leftist government of Mauricio Funes decided to put more army troops on the streets to help fight the soaring levels of crime.

ENVIRONMENT-SPAIN: Improving Garbage Management

The 60,000 tonnes of rubbish collected daily in Spain, equivalent to 1.3 kilos per person, is being managed by more green-friendly methods of recovery and treatment.

LABOUR: Sorting Garbage – Green and Dignified Work

More than 1,500 representatives of waste recyclers from 13 countries, and thousands of other visitors, including the host country Brazil's left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, met last week in São Paulo, demonstrating that they are no longer pariahs in our throw-away society.

ARGENTINA: ‘Drugs Are Killing the Youngsters We’re Feeding’

"You often ask yourself why feed them if some wretch is just going to come along and sell them that rubbish," says Isabel Ruiz, who runs the Las Brujas soup kitchen in Moreno, a poor neighbourhood on the west side of the Argentine capital.

BRAZIL: Five-Star Garbage

For the past 43 years, biologists Edna and Luiz Toledo have not waited for the garbage truck to collect their trash. Their three-storey house is in fact made out of "garbage", from the floor to the roof. Items that others would see as worthless are, in their eyes, valuable raw material.

BRAZIL: Drugs, Guns, Gangs and Police – a Violent Mix in the ‘Favelas’

Janaína*, who lives in Jacarezinho, one of the most violent "favelas" or shantytowns in this Brazilian city, describes the control that the "movement" – the local drug mafia – exercises over the neighbourhood and local residents.

U.S.: Cities Use Inclusionary Zoning as Housing Costs Climb

With most U.S. cities facing a severe shortage of affordable housing, more and more are beginning to turn to so-called inclusionary zoning (IZ).