News stories by Michelle Tolson

Poipet, Cambodia, Jul 03 (IPS) - Eight people, three women and five men, are crouched in the dirt in the center of a roundabout where the main road at Poipet --a major Cambodia border town-- merges with the check point to Thailand. Dust swirls in the wind as they squint their eyes at the sun. Others playing the waiting game mill about on the road's edges.

PHNOM PENH, May 31 (IPS) - The movement for reproductive justice sees women's decision to have – or not have – children as a fundamental right. Should they choose to bear a child, women should have the right to care and provide for them; if they opt not to give birth, family planning services should be made available to enable women to space or prevent pregnancies.

PORTLAND, Oregon, U.S., Apr 29 (IPS) - As a child, 78-year-old Yakama Nation elder Russell Jim was forced to go to a boarding school in Washington State and was beaten for speaking his language.

YAKAMA NATION, Washington State, U.S., Apr 14 (IPS) - The Department of Energy (DOE), politicians and CEOs were discussing how to warn generations 125,000 years in the future about the radioactive waste at Hanford Nuclear Reservation, considered the most polluted site in the U.S., when Native American anti-nuclear activist Russell Jim interrupted their musings: "We'll tell them."

PORTLAND, Oregon, Mar 18 (IPS) - Built in 1909, Bonneville Fish Hatchery is one of the oldest and largest in the Columbia River Basin, located in the U.S. Pacific Northwest.

PHNOM PENH, Jan 24 (IPS) - Many Cambodian women arrive in South Korea or China for marriage, only to find themselves being chosen as mistresses, say labour rights activists. While young Cambodian men, who travel to Thailand to work on fishing boats, often fall prey to drug abuse.

PHNOM PENH, Jan 09 (IPS) - “Cambodian garment workers have two handcuffs and one weapon . One handcuff is a short-term contract . Even if they get sick, if they get pregnant they feel they have to get an abortion so they don’t lose their jobs.

RATANAKIRI PROVINCE, Cambodia, Dic 17 (IPS) - "I prefer the dam to the fish," says middle-aged farmer Ton Noun, when asked his opinion on a proposed 400 megawatt dam on Sesan river near his home in northeastern Cambodia. Then he chuckles and asks, "What fish?"

SOUTHERN GOBI REGION, Mongolia, Oct 24 (IPS) - Decades of international and local collaboration have brought the Tahki or Asian Wild Horse back from the brink of extinction and reintroduced herds to Mongolia's Gobi desert and grasslands. However, the country's other wild equine - the Mongolian Wild Ass or Khulan - is fast disappearing.

PHNOM PENH, Oct 24 (IPS) - "We are not saying that all people become sex workers, but you make more money," Virak Horn, a 32-year-old gay sex worker who works freelance in Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh, tells IPS. He earns enough to support his family and pay for his college degree.