News stories by Ivet González

HAVANA, Sep 20 (IPS) - It is unusual to see Cuban sports legends in public service announcements. However, a handful of champions and rising young stars are wearing messages or appearing in TV spots against violence among men or toward women.

HAVANA, Sep 06 (IPS) - In nearly all of Latin America, illegal abortion is a serious public health problem. But in Cuba, where abortion is legal, it is being overused by teenagers.

HAVANA, Aug 20 (IPS) - The furrows are hard to make out in fields of the Finca de Semillas, a farm on Havana's outskirts, because its administrators, Esmilda Sánchez and Raúl Aguilar, protect every centimetre of soil with mulch.

HAVANA, Jul 18 (IPS) - Despite the progress made by Cuban women in education, where they account for 64 percent of university graduates, they continue to have a limited presence in management positions.

CEBALLOS, Cuba, Jun 24 (IPS) - Homemade machines for pulverising fruit and sealing cans of preserves, created by inventive entrepreneurs, are one of the pillars of a slight rise in mini-industries in different parts of Cuba, where food production is picking up.

HAVANA, Jun 17 (IPS) - "How much is a species worth? What is the price tag on the services provided by a river or a forest?" These are the questions biologist María Elena Perdomo is asking to encourage Cubans to take account of environmental costs, which may apparently be incorporated in the present economic reforms.

HAVANA, Jun 05 (IPS) - On a piece of paper, Jennifer Rivas draws a beach, with little girls carrying bags of trash and signs that say "Let's take care of the environment." The 10-year-old is part of an educational programme, Friends of the Bay, that involves 322 schools in the Cuban capital.

HAVANA, Jun 04 (IPS) - Many lesbians and gays in Cuba find different ways of achieving their dream of becoming mothers and fathers and forming families. But this is complicated in a country where neither civil unions nor adoption by non-heterosexual persons are legally recognised.

HAVANA, May 21 (IPS) - "The people are the only thing that matters," says agronomist Miguel Ángel Salcines, who then goes on to list a series of other "secondary" factors that have turned Vivero Alamar, an urban farm on the outskirts of the Cuban capital, into a rare success story in the country's depressed agricultural sector.

CIEGO DE ÁVILA, Cuba, May 20 (IPS) - The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community in Cuba has won advances on issues like the change of name of pre-operative transgender persons, while they continue to fight for the right to same-sex civil unions.