TOKYO -- For Tadashi Kato, it was long-awaited good news that the United Nations General Assembly adopted a declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples around the world after more than 20 years of debate.

WASHINGTON -- Global climate change, if left unaddressed, is likely to pose "as a great or a greater foreign policy and national security challenge than any problem" the United States currently faces, according to a major new report released here Monday by two influential Washington think tanks.

GUATEMALA CITY -- "Guatemala is starting out on a path to change, and from now on I am president-(elect of all Guatemalans); I am no longer identified with a single party," said social democrat Álvaro Colom, urging unity after Sunday’s runoff elections.

SUVA -- Civil society organisations in Fiji have welcomed a High Court decision giving the media the right to publish a confidential audit report commissioned by the state pension fund.

NEW DELHI -- The world´s richest countries must drastically reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to mitigate climate change impacts, says the lead author of a United Nations report, due for release later this month, that focuses on impacts of global warming on the developing world.

ROME -- Bolivian President Evo Morales visited Italy this week to receive a special award for his government´s commitment to social and health issues. He has made these issues a "political priority."

IVALO, Finland -- The highest trustee of the reindeer herding association of Ivalo, herder Viljo Juru, leads his guests to the carcass of a reindeer that has been pecked at by ravens and hawks.
The animal died on Saturday when relations between the majority and minority of the association reached a boiling point at the Moitakuru roundup fence south of Ivalo, Helsingin Sanomat reports.

QUIBDÓ, Colombia -- The Atrato River is "full of malaria", according to a dozen men in rubber boots, standing in the water that has inundated the village of Tanguí, in Colombia´s north-western jungle.

RIO DE JANEIRO -- The international council of the World Social Forum met this week in the northern Brazilian city of Belem to plan the next steps to be taken by global activists, including the eighth edition of the WSF, to be held in January 2009 in Brazil’s Amazon region.

GUATEMALA CITY -- "Where are you? Hurry up, we’re waiting for you!" barked the voice on the telephone. Guatemalan journalist Enrique Castañeda had just finished writing an investigative article on rightwing presidential candidate Otto Pérez’s alleged links with organised crime, and this was the first phonecall he received.

MELBOURNE -- Australia’s opposition to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, passed in September, is in step with the government’s approach to domestic policies under Prime Minister John Howard.

GUATEMALA CITY -- Guatemala’s costly and violent presidential election campaign will come to an end with Sunday’s runoff vote, in which retired General Otto Pérez and his tough stance on crime will face off with businessman Álvaro Colom, who has put an emphasis on extending a helping hand of solidarity to the poor.

LIMA -- Peruvian Prime Minister Jorge del Castillo signed a memorandum of understanding with mayors and governors opposed to the Majaz mining company’s Río Blanco project, which the people of the Piura highlands in northern Peru have been opposing for five years.

COLOMBO -- While Sri Lanka’s minister for human rights Mahinda Samarasinghe has denied allegations by a top United Nations official that torture is ‘routine’ in the country, there is little doubt that the renewed civil war has resulted in brutality hitting new lows.

BELLAVISTA, Colombia - "Father Antún! Father Antún is back!" were the happy, surprised shouts heard by the IPS news team accompanying Catholic priest Antún Ramos as he returned to his former parish in the village of Bellavista in northwestern Colombia.

ORISSA, India -- When Gram Vikas, one of India’s largest non-government organisations (NGOs), began work to uplift rural Adivasi (tribal) communities across this eastern Indian state, it started by building toilets.

SAN SALVADOR -- Rosa Anaya was leaving her home early on her way to school that morning of Oct. 26, 1987 in El Salvador, when she saw her father, a few steps ahead of her, crumple beside his car, hit by six bullets.

NEW DELHI -- As India revelled over the emergence of homegrown businessman Mukesh Ambani as the world’s richest person, following a stock market spike this week, landless labourers and socially marginalised groups marched into the capital by the thousand demanding a piece of the country’s newfound prosperity.

BROOKLIN, Canada -- Global warming has been compared to a slow-moving train wreck, in which the passengers are blissfully unaware of the coming catastrophe.

GUATEMALA CITY -- A Mayan manuscript known as the Dresden Codex was acquired by the Royal Library of the court of Saxony in 1739. As of this week, an exact replica of the precious manuscript is on display in Guatemala, donated by the Saxon State Library in Dresden, Germany, which holds the original.

VANCOUVER, Canada -- Miloon Kothari, the U.N. special rapporteur for housing, recently visited Canada on a fact-finding mission to look at homelessness, aboriginal and women´s housing issues, and the impact of the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver.

BANGKOK -- A new mechanism to measure the impact of rising oil prices on Asia’s poor offers a sobering forecast. There is a clear threat to the region’s gains in reducing the numbers living poverty.

SANTIAGO -- Urban poverty and chaotic urban growth, loss of biodiversity, degradation of marine ecosystems and water and air pollution are just a few of the serious environmental problems that continue to plague Latin America and the Caribbean, the U.N. Environment Programme said Thursday in a new global report.

UNITED NATIONS -- Failure to take drastic action to avert further climate change and loss of biodiversity poses serious risks to the future of humanity, a major U.N. report warned Thursday.

MANAGUA -- The forces of nature are giving Nicaragua no respite. After the hurricane that devastated the country’s northeastern Caribbean coast in September, weeks of torrential rains have claimed lives and caused economic damages, and now the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is warning of famine.

SARISKA, Rajasthan -- Three years after 22 tigers were brazenly hunted down by poachers in the Sariska Tiger Reserve, a protected park in the Aravalli hills of northwestern India, the blame game has not ended.

OTTAWA -- These are prosperous times for Canadian mining and oil companies extracting resources from Colombia.

WASHINGTON -- The World Bank is scrambling to respond to complaints that it broke its own rules to support commercial logging at the expense of Pygmy lands and livelihoods in the war-wrecked Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

TUCSON, Arizona -- The Supreme Court of Belize on Friday handed down a historic and landmark decision affirming the rights of the indigenous Maya communities of Belize to land and resources that they have traditionally used and occupied.

GUATEMALA CITY -- The Guatemalan justice system commuted a death sentence handed down in 1999 to 40 years in prison this week, in compliance with a 2005 ruling issued by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.