Vanessa Madrigal was working as a secretary for a private clinic in the Costa Rican capital, but only a month after returning from maternity leave she was fired, struck by one of the waves of layoffs that have swept across Central America in the wake of the global financial tsunami.

Questions about Iran's nuclear thrust are tumbling out, echoing around the world in several directions.

A moderate dissident group in Cuba that aspires to become a 'political majority' in the future announced Thursday that it would hold a congress in 2010.

As 13 prisoners held at the U.S. naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba appeared set to finally win their freedom, others are asking their release to be deferred.

Traffic in light weapons and small arms is one of Latin America's major disarmament concerns, because they fuel urban violence, especially in countries like Mexico, Guatemala and Brazil.

The latest killings of Awá Indians in southern Colombia — 12 members of a family, including four children and three teenagers —, the forced displacement of hundreds of native villagers, and death threats against indigenous leaders and teachers are signs indicating that their demand to be considered neutral in the armed conflict is still being ignored.

Cuba is facing the challenge of boosting agricultural output under difficult climate conditions and on soils badly deteriorated by erosion, salinity and other problems. And scientists have a strategic role to play, provided they do not sit in their laboratories but get out into the fields where the action is.

Putting the power of art to the test in extreme situations has become an unintended but necessary task for the Axé Project, a Brazilian non-governmental organisation (NGO) aimed at creating the conditions for street kids and other at-risk children to overcome educational, family and community exclusion.

As secretary-general of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in September 1994, Nafis Sadik had described as a 'quantum leap' efforts to reinforce commitments in addressing infant and maternal mortality, education and reproductive health and family planning.

The race to mass-produce vaccines for the lethal H1N1 virus has attracted contenders from Asia’s developing countries, confirming a noticeable expansion of a field that has been dominated by flu vaccine production centres in Europe and North America.