News stories by Constanza Vieira, page 2

BOGOTÁ, Dic 13 (IPS) - The ousted left-wing mayor of the Colombian capital, Gustavo Petro, is a casualty of the battle over the introduction of a Zero Garbage programme, which had included thousands of informal recyclers in the waste disposal business.

LAS PAVAS/BOGOTÁ, Nov 14 (IPS) - The rural community of Las Pavas in northern Colombia received this year's National Peace Prize Wednesday in recognition of its peaceful struggle for land that is claimed by an oil palm company, in a case that became an international symbol of the conflict over land in this country.

FINCA GALICIA, Cordillera Central, Colombia, Oct 26 (IPS) - A new system of tunnels at the Alto de La Línea mountain pass in Colombia's central Cordillera mountain range will open up a key logistics route for this country and neighbouring Venezuela. But it could be overcome by disaster if the Machín volcano erupts.

BOGOTA, Aug 30 (IPS) - A strike declared nearly two weeks ago in Colombia by farmers and joined later by truck drivers, health workers, miners and students spread to include protests in the cities before mushrooming into a general strike Thursday, demanding changes in the government's economic policies.

BOGOTA, Aug 23 (IPS) - Colombia's FARC guerrillas announced Friday a "pause" in the peace talks in Havana, which formally opened a year ago. But analysts say it is only a temporary glitch.

BOGOTA, Aug 12 (IPS) - "There is no development without peace. It should be understood that, for there to be development in a country, there must be an internal peace process," says Kanayo Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).

BOGOTA, Aug 07 (IPS) - "I was a hunter. I killed many animals," said Rosalino Ortiz, a representative of Mashiramo, a campesino organisation that monitors biodiversity in Colombia's Massif range in the southern department of Huila.

CAJAMARCA, Colombia, Jul 29 (IPS) - People in a farming town in central Colombia voted overwhelmingly against global corporation AngloGold Ashanti's La Colosa gold mine.

OROCUÉ, Colombia, Jun 21 (IPS) - Along the unpaved road between the town of Orocué and the Wisirare private reserve in the eastern Colombian department of Casanare, biologist Juliana Cárdenas asks the driver to stop the bus so she can collect a specimen of West Indian foxtail, a kind of grass growing along the road.

TUCURINCA, Colombia, Jun 11 (IPS) - José "Goyo" Hernández has never been given a mask to keep him from breathing in the coal dust blowing off the 13 trains that pass daily through this village in the municipality of Zona Bananera in the northern Colombian department of Magdalena, during his 12-hour shift at the railway crossing.