News stories by Marcela Valente, page 25

Two months after the Copenhagen conference on climate change, which was widely regarded as a fiasco, the international community is meeting on the Indonesian island of Bali to discuss biodiversity and ecosystems, promote the green economy and carry out institutional reforms.

The imminent arrival of a British oil exploration rig in the South Atlantic ocean has recharged tensions between Argentina and Britain over the Malvinas/Falkland Islands.

Some 300 women a year die in Argentina of complications during pregnancy, childbirth or the postpartum period, from largely preventable causes. Many of the deaths result from unsafe abortions.

The year that has just ended was the worst for the Argentine economy since the 2002 and 2003 economic collapse. However, both government officials and economic analysts say the worst of the present crisis is over and that growth will return this year, in the light of improved internal and external conditions.

After a months-long legal battle, two gay men in Argentina became the first homosexuals to marry in Latin America, in a wedding that took place in the southernmost province, Tierra del Fuego, the only one governed by a woman.

A study by more than 30 experts from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay warns of the threat menacing the survival of fish species and 50 riverside settlements in the Río de la Plata basin, which is the second largest river system in South America after the Amazon basin and contains a wealth of biodiversity.

A study on young people and human development in South America's Mercosur trade bloc indicates that while in Brazil, the country's longstanding social inequality is the focus of at least somewhat successful efforts to combat it, in Argentina the vision of an equitable society is fading away.

A group of local residents from Villa 1-11-14, a slum on the outskirts of the Argentine capital, put out a magazine aimed at breaking down the stereotypes propagated by the mainstream media, which associate neighbourhoods like theirs only with drugs, crime and marginalisation.

Touted as 'harvested forests,' single-crop tree plantations are fast encroaching on the native forests and grasslands of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, affecting the environment and the lives of local communities, rural women say.

Latin American governments are considering a bloc response to the Japanese whaling fleet's departure for Antarctica, in a new season of what it claims is 'hunting for scientific purposes' and which threatens to kill 1,000 whales in the protected Southern Ocean sanctuary.