News stories by Alexandra Di Stefano Pironti

BARCELONA, Spain, Jun 25 (IPS) - Economy professor Arcadi Oliveres has become a popular face of the growing discontent in Spain because he calls a spade a spade.

JAKARTA, Jan 04 (IPS) - Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority country, has found a deterrent to Islamic fundamentalists: they dress conservatively, sport short beards and Islamic caps and emulate the ways of the Prophet Muhammad.

JAKARTA, Dic 02 (IPS) - To most people, holes in the ozone layer or the melting of polar ice caps can sound like distant catastrophes. "But let's talk about concrete examples," says an Indonesian director whose documentary film captures the lives of local farmers affected by a dramatically changing environment.

JAKARTA, Oct 27 (IPS) - If the caste system existed in Indonesia the 10 elderly people who live in Jakarta's Kramat Street would surely be untouchables: for decades they and their families have been banned from jobs and access to education and, until 2005, their identity cards marked them as former political prisoners.

JAKARTA, Sep 17 (IPS) - Indonesia suffers from a malaise: an appalling lack of infrastructure which makes a mandarin orange that travels thousands of miles from Argentina cost nearly the same as another picked locally.

JAKARTA, Aug 08 (IPS) - Scattered across 17,000 islands on the Indian and Pacific oceans, the world's largest Muslim country has found its own blend of Islam: equal parts religion, secularism and contradictions.

Unless the rapid deforestation in one of the world’s most richly-forested countries is controlled, Indonesians may one day wonder, 'where are all the flowers gone.' To those lyrics by legendary U.S. singer Joan Baez they might also have to add, and where are all the tigers, elephants, orangutans, birds and ancient forest communities gone.