Percy Mahinda Rajapaksa is the quintessential Sri Lankan politician - someone who senses the subtle shifts in the political landscape quickly and can turn a narrowest of victories into the strongest of legacies.

With the snow-capped peak of Mount Kilimanjaro providing a backdrop under simmering tropical sunshine, a group of women in Mijongweni village break into song.

'Now it's just a matter of showing the projects to the governments so they can transform them into public policies,' said Martín Hopenhayn, director of social development for the Latin American and Caribbean economic agency ECLAC, at the close of a conference here that showcased thousands of community-based development initiatives.

Bridges, railroads, petrochemicals, steel mills, electricity, aqueducts, agriculture, meat-processing plants, ship building and even cable cars: Brazil's powerful entrepreneurial arm is reaching towards the Caribbean, via Venezuela, where the Hugo Chávez government is working to build what it calls '21st century socialism.'

Iraq's much-awaited recent power-sharing deal signifies a shift of influence on Iraqi politics away from the U.S. and its regional allies to domestic Iraqi political actors, most notably the Kurds, and eastward to Iran.

Ines Fernandez and Valentina Rosendo, two indigenous Me'phaa women from the Mexican state of Guerrero, were raped and tortured by members of the Mexican Army in 2002. Since then, they have been subject to a constant stream of threats to keep them from speaking about the incidents.

With pressure to slash the 1.3 trillion-dollar federal deficit rising sharply, the public debate over whether to exempt the Pentagon from such cuts is moving rapidly toward centre-stage.

'On Dec. 15, we will make the great leap ahead when we present our health programme, our hospital boat, to the country,' Caetano Scannavino announced in the name of a community project that has achieved one of its aims: to be included in the Brazilian government's social policies.

Helicopter gunships patrolling the skies, missile launcher ships in the Tagus estuary, police with heavy machineguns and armoured cars deployed on the main streets of the Portuguese capital have created a warlike ambience in the city hosting the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) Summit.

If Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg were interested in making a sequel to his 1996 film 'Crash', in which the main characters derive sexual pleasure from car crashes, Mexico could be an ideal location, due to the large number of traffic accidents in this country.