News stories by Marcela Valente, page 19

A public children’s television channel broadcasting high quality fiction, animation and documentary programmes designed by the Argentine Education Ministry for the two-to-12 age range can now be viewed elsewhere in Latin America via the internet.

As industrialised countries face a recession that may last longer than expected, South America’s largest trade bloc, strengthened by having successfully weathered the global financial and economic crisis, is making strides towards better internal coordination.

Convincing young people who have dropped out of school to resume their studies is no easy feat. Which is why a group of social organisations in Argentina are joining with the government to launch a different kind of campaign to bring young people back into the classroom in 2011.

If Latin America is to sustain continued economic growth, it faces the dilemma of either threatening its rich biodiversity or transforming into a global leader in providing environmental services based on its unique ecosystems.

'My mother used to beat me. She would lock me away, and then she started chaining me to the table,' says Elizabeth. Teresa recounts how she was seven months pregnant when her husband grabbed her by the hair, threw her to the ground and kicked her.

'Men are drunks and batterers,' Lorena Maurin tells IPS before heading in to her computer class, an oasis for women in the 22 de Enero neighbourhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

Latin America and the Caribbean are taking firm steps against the use of tobacco with the adoption of no smoking laws, bans on advertising, and graphic pictorial warnings on cigarette packets.

'Community radio stations in Haiti play an indispensable role during catastrophes, and so do women, who can identify the most urgent needs of families during the reconstruction of the country,' said a representative of one of these stations in the Caribbean island nation.

'I can't even walk because I run out of breath. Food is my drug,' says a 31-year-old man who weighs 215 kilos. 'I hide to eat; it's something I can't control,' says a 21-year-old woman who weighs 152 kilos.

After the late 2001 financial and political meltdown in Argentina, thousands of companies were abandoned by their owners in a sea of debt. But some of them were taken over and reopened by their employees. Today, as the economy continues to grow, these worker-run factories are still going strong.