News stories by Danilo Valladares, page 14

'I've been working in the streets since I was a girl. My parents didn't send me to school, so it's really hard for me to find a job,' says Carol Orozco, 31, who forms part of the veritable army of vendors hawking their wares on the streets of Central America.

Ecologists in Guatemala see a recent ruling by Canada's Supreme Court, which ordered Canadian mining companies to carry out rigorous environmental assessments, as a positive precedent that could help improve environmental controls over the mining industry in this Central American country.

Human rights groups are worried that the declassification of military archives dating from Guatemala's 1960-1996 civil war, which left more than 200,000 victims, by a special commission will not go far enough in terms of clarifying the atrocities.

Through the 'My Name Is Not XX' campaign, the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation is working to identify the remains of thousands of victims who were forcibly disappeared during the country's 1960-1996 armed conflict, by inviting their relatives to provide DNA samples.

After a bus driver was shot to death in Sololá, a city in southwestern Guatemala, an angry mob captured two men and one woman suspected of committing the crime, beat them and burnt them alive in the central plaza.

Original Guatemalan army records on a scorched-earth campaign known as 'Operation Sofía', presented as evidence in a human rights case in Spain, have bolstered hopes for justice among the relatives of victims of Guatemala's 36-year civil war in which more than 200,000 people, mainly Mayan Indians, were killed.

Social organisations in Guatemala are celebrating the entry into effect of a family planning law that will usher sex education into the country's classrooms and facilitate access to birth control methods, as a victory in the fight against the country's high birth and maternal and infant mortality rates.

A thick, chocolate-coloured scum floats on the normally clear blue waters of Lake Atitlán, in the southwestern Guatemalan province of Sololá, caused by agricultural fertilisers and untreated sewage from surrounding villages and farms.

Juan Manuel Ardón's bones jut out and his hair is dull and thin: signs of severe malnutrition. He is so weak that he can hardly walk or talk, and the doctors say his weight and stature are those of a six-year-old, rather than 15-year-old, boy.

Construction is expected to begin soon on a new highway across north-central Guatemala, the largest infrastructure project tackled so far by the government of Álvaro Colom.