News headlines in 2010, page 6

While real estate investment and the number of upscale apartments for sale or rent are growing in the Argentine capital, tens of thousands of poor families are living in crowded shanty towns, and are demanding affordable housing and access to mortgage programmes.

President Barack Obama's hopes of closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility appear as far from being realised as ever in the wake of new legislation approved by Congress this week.

'I feel I can breathe more deeply and look more towards the future. I feel at peace,' Mexican peasant Rodolfo Montiel told IPS, from somewhere on the west coast of the United States.

The cholera crisis is forcing Haitian authorities to address an unpleasant and now life-threatening problem — untreated feces.

The Christmas season comes with joy and merrymaking in Kenya, where preparations for the festivities are underway as people crowd the street to shop for clothes and gifts. But even as the cheer spreads all around, the situation is different for the thousands of internally displaced Kenyans (IDP’s) still living in various camps.

The legendary Scheherazade has exchanged her enthralling tales of 'One Thousand and One Nights' for a compact disc with 1,001 academic articles, essays and books, giving Cubans access to materials that would otherwise be very difficult to obtain.

In what some are calling the largest prison strike in U.S. history, inmates in the state of Georgia coordinated a strike across multiple prison facilities using pre-paid cell phones.

Programmes to reduce the unemployment rate among young people in Latin America and the Caribbean should be a priority for countries in the region, said experts, trade unionists and government representatives meeting in the Chilean capital.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has reiterated his concern at the escalating violence in Cote d'Ivoire, where as many as 20 people were reportedly killed in clashes between security forces and opposition activists. '[Ban] is deeply concerned about the continuing political stalemate,' said spokesperson Farhan Haq. He called the violence a 'worrying turn'.

Living sustainably can be learned. That is the idea championed by two schools in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, where students are learning to become environmental citizens of the new millennium.