Latin America

The Greek parliament has passed an austerity package by a slim majority to slash 40 billion dollars off the national debt. Wednesday’s vote saw 155 members of parliament vote in favor, 138 against and five abstentions.

As the 10 ships of the Freedom Flotilla II – Stay Human make their final preparations to set sail for the Gaza Strip, purported acts of sabotage have been added to threats from Israel.

Two days ahead of a formal vote scheduled for Jun. 30, former French finance minister Christine Lagarde became the first woman to be appointed managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), headquartered in Washington, Tuesday.

The governments and big private media groups in Latin America are waging a war to win over public opinion, the ultimate arbiter of legitimacy, and the only solution would appear to be to strike up an alliance.

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.