Latin America

Twenty-eight-year-old Yushi Sato washes cars for a living, but they are no ordinary cars. Every day, Sato hoses down vehicles contaminated with radiation from the Fukushima Nuclear Power plant that was damaged by the earthquake and tsunami that hit north-east Japan Mar 11.

“We are all safer here; it’s great because this way there are no men groping you,” Jaqueline Escobar, a sales executive, told IPS on a bus that is exclusively for women, a service against sexual harassment that is being tried out in the Guatemalan capital.

Although Argentina’s immigration law is regarded as one of the most progressive in Latin America, xenophobia and discrimination persist, showing that progress is still more theoretical than practical.

In a much-anticipated decision, U.S. President Barack Obama announced here Wednesday evening that he will withdraw 10,000 of the 100,000 U.S. troops currently deployed in Afghanistan by the end of this year and a total of 33,000 by sometime next summer.

Three months after the devastating Mar. 11 earthquake that caused an accident at the Fukushima power plant, energy experts warn of economic fallout if nuclear energy is snuffed out too quickly, much to the dismay of an increasingly angry and frustrated public.

Rapid economic growth in China’s coastal regions has resulted in serious levels of ocean pollution, damaging marine life and posing a threat to humans. As much as half of China’s offshore areas are considered polluted.

“Women didn’t want to be slaves any more, or work professionally at what they were trying to liberate themselves from,” renowned Venezuelan chef Helena Ibarra told IPS, explaining why women have taken so long to compete in a workplace as symbolically feminine as the kitchen.

A year after Israel’s massacre of nine humanitarian volunteers aboard the mavi Marmara who were delivering aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip, I interviewed Dr Ahmed Yousef (Secretary General, The House of Wisdom Institution for Conflict Resolution and Governance, and past-President of the Committee for Breaking the Siege) in Gaza about the upcoming Freedom Flotilla II.

Guatemala will become a hub of connection and logistics for world trade when a highway-rail cargo transport corridor linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans is completed.