News stories by Marcela Valente, page 17

Crowded into precarious mud-floored dorms or sheet-metal trailers or forced to live in tents of plastic sheeting, with neither piped water nor electricity, after working 14-hour days: these are the harsh conditions faced by hundreds of thousands of rural workers in Argentina despite bumper crops and record earnings for agribusiness.

Some 50 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Latin America have formed a coalition to fight cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, diabetes and cancer, which have become the main causes of death and disability for people in the region.

After 35 years of campaigning and legal action by the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, the first trial over the systematic theft of babies of political prisoners during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship began Monday.

British actor Colin Firth's sensitivity and skill in portraying one man's determination to overcome stuttering, in 'The King's Speech', did more than any campaign in Argentina to show people that with timely intervention, the lives of tens of thousands of children can change.

An Argentine government proposal to crack down on clients benefiting from the trafficking of persons for the purposes of sexual exploitation has unleashed a heated debate between feminist organisations that support the idea and sex workers who are opposed to it.

Unconventional venues for high-quality experimental theatre have found a voice of their own in the Argentine capital's cultural scene, and are demanding freedom from the red tape that is hindering their development.

The Colombian government's greater openness to dialogue and the recent release of hostages by that country's FARC guerrillas have created a climate in which it is possible to move in the direction of a negotiated solution to an armed conflict that has dragged on for nearly half a decade.

Despite years of strong economic growth, record harvests and massive social assistance programmes, there are still places in Argentina untouched by the boom, where child malnutrition has even claimed lives.

One of the potential impacts of climate change that arouses most concern is an increase in diseases transmitted by tropical insects, like Chagas' disease, Argentina's main endemic illness.

Although Latin America still has an image of a young region, the base of the population pyramid is shrinking fast as a result of declining birth rates while the top section is expanding due to the growing numbers of elderly -- a phenomenon that poses enormous demographic challenges.