News stories by Marcela Valente, page 27

The young students taught by Maruca, who has been giving free painting classes to children in a town in Argentina's pampas for the last 50 years, have won more than 1,000 international prizes for their artwork.

South America is perhaps most often associated with the Amazon jungle, the world's largest tropical rainforest. But along its western edge, from Ecuador to southern Chile and Argentina, it also harbours huge glaciers which are rapidly melting due to global warming.

At a special summit Friday in Argentina, the presidents of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) questioned the agreement under which Colombia will allow the United States to use seven military bases in its territory.

'The night of Oct. 23, 1976, nearly 33 years ago, was the last time I saw my son Pablo. He was 17 years old, and he was terrified. Since then I have had no reliable news about his fate. My family and I have been left at the mercy of the anguished torments of our imagination.'

Keeping a hospital appointment in the Argentine capital is a far less fearsome ordeal for transgender persons, a sector of the population that according to doctors had 'dramatic' statistics of illness, when they are accompanied by trained health promoters who, like them, have chosen a different gender identity.

Nearly five years after a fire in a night club in the Argentine capital claimed the lives of 194 young people, a court sentenced the club manager and several city officials Wednesday. But the judges absolved the members of the band that was playing that night, touching off angry reactions from families of the victims waiting outside the courthouse.

Trials for human rights crimes committed by the 1976-1983 dictatorship in Argentina, reopened four years ago after amnesty laws were struck down, are moving at such a slow pace that so far only 50 people have been convicted. At this rate it is estimated proceedings will continue for another 15 years.

Leonardo Henrichsen turned his film camera on the soldier who was aiming at him and held it steady until he was shot to death. But the justice system never caught up with the killer of the Argentine journalist, murdered 36 years ago in Chile while he was filming a military uprising for Swedish television.

In spite of the resilience shown by the Argentine economy during the current global recession, deep-rooted distrust has led to the flight of 44 billion dollars over the last two years, which have been deposited abroad, locked up in vaults or tucked under the mattress.

After a prolonged boom, the rate of economic growth in Argentina came to a rather abrupt halt last year. Experts say the crisis has bottomed out, but they won't venture an opinion on whether what comes next will be a gradual recovery, or stagnation.