Government institutions and civil society organisations are holding talks, workshops and other activities aimed at raising awareness and overcoming intolerance, in preparation for the National Day Against Homophobia on Sunday in Costa Rica.

Journalists in East Timor are anxiously waiting for a set of media laws to be revised after a negative reaction to a draft that was circulated in March.

The H1N1 flu virus has begun its southward march in Latin America, carried by passengers travelling from areas hit by the outbreak. But the mortality rate is much lower than in Mexico, and there are no signs of 'sustained domestic transmission' in the rest of the region.

The Sri Lankan government, which has come under heavy fire for the massive humanitarian crisis in the country's war zone, is winning the 25-year-old military conflict but is on the verge of losing the propaganda war overseas.

After years of boycotts and protests, the pressure on the world’s largest oil company to change its practices might soon be coming from the mutual funds that invest in it, some shareholders hope.

While the swine flu virus does not appear to be as potentially devastating as first imagined, environmentalists and some public health activists argue that it should be considered a wake-up call to the public about the conditions in which much of our food is being produced.

The United States, joined by the UK, France and other EU states, are stepping up economic pressure on Sri Lanka to stop killing of civilians during ongoing battles with Tamil guerrillas in the North. The countries are planning on using a proposed IMF bailout package and trade concessions as bargaining tools.

Ocean acidification offers the clearest evidence of dangers of climate change. And yet the indisputable fact that burning fossil fuels is slowly turning the oceans into an acid bath has been largely ignored by industrialised countries and their climate treaty negotiators, concluded delegates from 76 countries at the World Oceans Conference in Manado, Indonesia.

In an effort to stem the flow of money from mineral mines fueling the brutal civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the U.S. Senate is pushing ahead with new bipartisan legislation that would force U.S. companies to track and disclose the country of origin of minerals used in common electronic products.

Two shots to the head, fired from a van, put a sudden end to the life of Argenis Vásquez, the organising secretary of the Toyota assembly plant workers' union in the city of Cumaná, 400 kilometres east of the Venezuelan capital, as he was leaving his home at 09:00 local time.