News stories by Inés Acosta

MONTEVIDEO, Aug 26 (IPS) - A bill that would regulate large-scale mining operations is making its way through Uruguay's two houses of parliament, despite a lack of political consensus and vocal opposition from environmental organisations and other sectors of civil society.

MONTEVIDEO, Oct 10 (IPS) - Uruguayan schoolchildren are learning that cookies, candy, potato chips and soft drinks are bad for their health.

Some schools have taken the initiative and banned junk food from school snacks.

Artificial single-species forests are expanding fast in countries of the developing South, fuelled by low production costs and incentives from governments, and causing severe social and environmental impacts, warned experts from around the world who met this week in the Uruguayan capital.

Uruguay is on the point of reaching the Millennium Development Goal for reducing the maternal mortality ratio, but it is still behind in other aspects of maternal health, like providing integrated sexual and reproductive health care, fighting syphilis and checking on mothers and babies during the postpartum period.

'We would get up and go to bed every day looking up at the sky, hoping for something to fall, but nothing happened, not even a drop fell,' says María Inés Queiros, who makes artisanal cheese in the southern Uruguayan province of San José.

Marisabel's modest home had no plumbing, like the rest of the dwellings in this poor suburb on the outskirts of Montevideo, the capital of this small South American country.

Contrary to popular belief in Uruguay, the capital city’s black population is no longer concentrated in neighbourhoods like Barrio Sur, Palermo and Cordón, which were historically home to the majority of African descendents and remain heavily steeped in Afro-Uruguayan culture.