Latin America

“I’m 60 years old and I never thought I’d see this moment with my own eyes,” Najib Taghuz tells IPS from the Tunisian-Libyan border. The engineer from the recently liberated town Gehryan is headed for Tunisia – his wife needs surgery on the left hand. But he hopes to return to a new Libya.

Rebels have entered the fortified compound of Muammar Gaddafi in Bab al-Azizya in Tripoli, following intense fighting with forces loyal to the Libyan leader.

El rebelde Consejo Nacional de Transición de Libia anunció el fin del régimen de Muammar Gadafi, cuyo paradero actual se desconoce mientras prosiguen los combates en Trípoli.

After decades of not bothering to switch off the lights in unoccupied rooms in their Tokyo home, Masayoshi Sakurai and his children now meticulously make sure they do.

As one of the world’s emerging economic powerhouses, Brazil is vigorously pursuing one of the key economic objectives on the U.N.’s development agenda: South-South Cooperation.

Biofuels are an alternative energy source that can drive local development by generating jobs, know-how and technology. But they can also cause social damage, as locals fear in the case of industrial-scale exploitation of babassu palm trees, which grow abundantly in the wild in central and northern Brazil.

For the first time, a representative of the indigenous communities in Peru’s Amazonas region is sitting in Congress: Eduardo Nayap, an Awajún leader who played a central role in the lengthy protests against laws that opened up native territories in the rainforest to oil, mining and logging companies.

The trade union federation that ex-dictator Hosni Mubarak used to repress labor movements and mobilize regime support for sham elections during his 30-year rule has been disbanded, striking a powerful blow to the old order.