Latin America

A process of “agrarian counter-reform” is taking place in Brazil, according to activist João Pedro Stédile, a leader of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST).

A small rally by prominent Israeli left-wing intellectuals in support of Palestinian statehood revived the dormant debate about the morality and sustainability of Israel’s 43-year occupation. Neither the choice of site nor timing was coincidental.

Behind the rusting zinc sheets covering the gates to his inner-city home, Norman Hamilton is one of the army of backyard gardeners who have been called to action in Jamaica’s latest efforts to improve food security.

The accident could have served as a wake-up call to the whole of humanity. Twenty-five years ago, on Apr. 26 1986, disaster struck at the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear complex in the Ukrainian state of the former Soviet Union.

While some observers here have blamed Saudi Arabia and its neighboring Sunni-led sheikhdoms as a major source of the icy winds that are blasting through the Gulf, the growing contradictions between the U.S. and Western “values” and their interests are adding to the unseasonable weather.

Civil society organizations in Japan have traditionally been on the sidelines in influencing mainstream policy, but the massive Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of Mar. 11 is becoming a catalyst for important change.

The mayor of Madrid, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, has called for a law for compulsory removals of homeless people off the streets, but this has met with resistance from civil society organisations and has split Ruiz-Gallardo’s own People’s Party (PP).

Although located over 9,500 kilometers from the North African country of Libya, the turmoil there has not left the leaders of some small Caribbean nations unscathed.

Mexico needs to take urgent steps to tighten oversight of the storage, handling and disposal of radioactive materials that can threaten the lives and health of its population, experts warn.

Military debris dumped into the world’s oceans are hazardous to coral ecosystems, reefs, fish and marine wildlife, say experts, who also warn – in light of the recent tragedy in Japan – that earthquakes and tsunamis could disturb this debris and even wash it ashore.