News stories by Sebastián Lacunza

BUENOS AIRES, Jan 28 (IPS) - The garbage strewn across many streets and sidewalks in the Argentine capital reflects the inefficiency of a waste collection and treatment system that, paradoxically, has become increasingly costly for the city's residents, say civil society groups and opposition parties.

The nearly 200 theatres in the Argentine capital have been staging an increasing number of plays exploring gender identity or specifically gay issues in recent years, in mainstream, fringe and state-run productions.

Inequality and poverty in Argentina are explained to a large extent by a job market that discriminates against women, coupled with insufficient equal opportunity regulations and failure to enforce existing labour laws, experts on the issue told IPS.

More than two years after he was sentenced to life in prison for crimes against humanity committed during the 1976-1983 dictatorship in Argentina, former police chaplain Christian von Wernich has not been penalised by the Catholic Church.

The violent deaths of four inmates in Argentine prisons in recent weeks confirmed the 'systematic' violation of human rights in the country's penitentiaries, according to human rights activists.

Civil society groups in Argentina are concerned that private security firms, which have mushroomed to 850 in Greater Buenos Aires, employ many former police officers and troops who played an active role in the political repression during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship.

Understanding desertification as a macroeconomic problem, with financial, productive, environmental and civil society aspects, is a major concern for Christian Mersmann, the managing director of the Global Mechanism of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

On weekdays in the Argentine capital, 1.5 million people use the subway, which was the first underground train system in Latin America and the 13th in the world. But while it remains an affordable means of transportation, it is the target of myriad complaints.

In the 25 years since the end of one of the bloodiest dictatorships in the history of Latin America, Argentina has racked up a total of 2,557 deaths from abuses in police stations and prisons, summary executions or trigger-happy police, according to an organisation for families of the victims.