News stories by Fabiana Frayssinet, page 8

LOMA CAMPANA, Argentina, Oct 01 (IPS) - Production here has skyrocketed so fast that for now the installations of the YPF oil company at the Loma Campana deposit in southwest Argentina are a jumble of interconnected shipping containers.

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 25 (IPS) - In most Latin American countries schools now provide sex education, but with a focus that is generally restricted to the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases – an approach that has not brought about significant modifications in the behaviour of adolescents, especially among the poor.

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 13 (IPS) - Immortalised by a famous tango, the "Niebla del riachuelo" (Mist over the Riachuelo river) has begun to dissipate over Argentina's most polluted river, much of which is lined by factories and slums. But two centuries of neglect and a complex web of political and economic interests are hindering a clean-up plan that requires a broad, concerted effort.

BUENOS AIRES, May 20 (IPS) - The advertising department of Swiss agribusiness giant Syngenta was on a roll in early 2004 when it published a map that dubbed a large area of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay the "United Republic of Soy".

BUENOS AIRES, Apr 23 (IPS) - At the age of 22, Franco finally landed his first job, although he is not on any payroll and receives no labour benefits. He is part of Argentina's informal economy, where one out of three workers are employed – a proportion the government aims to reduce by means of a new law.

CÓRDOBA, Argentina, Mar 19 (IPS) - Just being young, dark-skinned, poor, and wearing a hood or cap exposes you to arrest as a suspected offender in the Argentine province of Córdoba. Arbitrary police detentions are based on the misdemeanour of "loitering", meant to prevent crime but in fact a violation of constitutional rights.

BOUWER, Argentina, Mar 14 (IPS) - While the magnificent samba schools of Brazil were getting ready for the grand carnival in Rio de Janeiro, a modest carnival troupe toured a small Argentine town to draw attention to an urban problem that has brought the central province of Córdoba to the brink of environmental disaster: garbage.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 07 (IPS) - They poured into shopping malls en masse to have some fun. But the reaction, a mixture of fear, admiration and heavy-handed repression, brought a new youth movement into being in Brazil: the "rolezinhos."

CORDOBA, Argentina, Jan 25 (IPS) - Residents of a town in Argentina have won the first victory in their fight against biotech giant Monsanto, but they are still at battle stations, aware that winning the war is still a long way off.

BUENOS AIRES, Jan 10 (IPS) - Record temperatures at the start of the southern hemisphere summer in Argentina have been accompanied by highs on the thermometer of social discontent, as consumption peaks left thousands without electricity and threw into sharp focus the failings of the privatisation of the power industry in the 1990s.