News stories by Daniela Estrada, page 4

A wide range of strategies are being followed in the southeastern Uruguayan province of Rocha to counteract the environmental damages of activities like soy cultivation, plantation forestry and tourism. But challenges abound.

Providing technology to communities to ensure food security doesn't work if local traditions and social dynamics are not taken into account, concluded the participants in a forum here at the Fourth Assembly of the Global Environment Facility.

Civil society organisations called for more funds, less bureaucracy and greater decision-making power, at the opening of the Fourth Global Environment Facility (GEF) Assembly Monday in this Uruguayan resort town.

'The situation is critical,' said activist Iván Salazar, referring to the slow progress in providing emergency housing to people left homeless in his native Cauquenes, one of the Chilean towns hit hardest by the devastating Feb. 27 earthquake.

More than 60 percent of Chileans surveyed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) are opposed to full equality between women and men, according to a new national report released by the agency on Friday.

'I want to film the few untouched natural resources we have left and show the injustices that have been committed against our communities,' Claura Anchio, who took part in an innovative free filmmaking course for young Mapuche Indians in Chile, told IPS.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) flows to Latin America and the Caribbean, which fell 42 percent in 2009 due to the global economic crisis, will grow 40 to 50 percent this year, says a new report released by ECLAC Wednesday.

A small group of feminists demonstrated outside the Metropolitan Cathedral in the Chilean capital Thursday to express their condemnation of an influential Catholic priest accused of sexually abusing at least five teenagers.

Chile's right-wing President Sebastián Piñera is seeking congressional approval of a plan to finance the reconstruction of the country in the wake of the devastating Feb. 27 quake, which includes a temporary tax on business that the centre-left opposition would like to make permanent.

Alongside crucial emergency relief efforts, numerous organisations are offering free movies, concerts, plays, comedy performances and other cultural events aimed at lifting the spirits of people suffering the after-effects of the earthquake and tsunami that struck central and southern Chile on Feb. 27.