5 June 2014 Last updated at 07:06
June 5, 2014 - 1:58PM
The slums of Buenos Aires, called villas miserias, or towns of misery, grew by 50 percent from 2001 to 2010, according to the municipal government. Their sprawl on the ground is restricted in this crammed city,
G7 leaders warn Russia of fresh sanctions over Ukraine
Leaders of the G7 industrial nations meeting in Brussels say they are prepared to impose further sanctions on Russia over its actions in Ukraine.
A joint statement condemned Moscow for its "continuing violation" of Ukraine's sovereignty.
The G7 summit is the first since Russia was expelled from the group following its annexation of Crimea in March.
On Thursday, leaders are set to discuss the global economic outlook, climate change and development issues.
Although Russian President Vladimir Putin is not at the Brussels summit, he will hold face-to-face talks with some G7 leaders - not including US President Barack Obama - in Paris afterwards.
Syria and Egypt's tale of two polls could end in the same old story
A pair of presidential coronations have underlined the truth that it takes more than an election to make a democracy
No one was holding their breath for the results of Syria's presidential election, which was always certain to confirm that Bashar al-Assad has been given a third seven-year term by a grateful, or frightened, people.
Bleak jokes and cartoons have been circulating for weeks in the anti-Assad camp on the theme of barrel bombs serving as ballot boxes. In 2007, when he faced a referendum with no rivals, he won with a whopping 97.6% of the vote. With two approved challengers giving this bizarre contest a veneer of competition, this time he achieved 88.7%.
Still, it was never going to be easy for Assad to surpass the 96.1% officially attained by Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, the latest general to become president ofEgypt on a reported turnout of 47.5% that, if true, compares favourably with the 52% who voted when the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi narrowly beat the ancien régime candidate in 2012. Morsi may have been an unpopular failure, as his enemies say, but it bears repeating that he was still the country's only democratically elected president when he was overthrown a year ago.
Israel plans 1,500 new contentious settlement homes
Minister says move ‘a fitting Zionist response to formation of Palestinian terror government’
Israel’s housing ministry has said it is advancing plans for 1,500 new settlement housing units in the West Bank and east Jerusalem in response to the new Palestinian unity government backed by Hamas.
Housing minister Uri Ariel said that the move was a “fitting Zionist response to the formation of a Palestinian terror government”.
He said the housing plans were “just the beginning”.
The settlement units are in areas the Palestinians claim for their future state.
The construction and housing ministry announced the new plans in one of several steps necessary before construction begins.
Saving Papua New Guinea's rare tree kangaroo
Australian zookeepers Jean and Jim Thomas have spent the past decade working with the people of Papua New Guinea to preserve the Tenkile, an endangered tree kangaroo that was on the verge of extinction when they started.
For more than a decade, 42-year-old Jean Thomas and her husband, Jim Thomas, 47, have made their home in the remote mountainous jungles of Papua New Guinea. Both trained zookeepers, they left Australia in 2002 to join the Tenkile Conservation Alliance (TCA) - and started their mission to save a little-known species of tree kangaroo, the Tenkile, which was under threat of imminent extinction.
"At that stage we knew nothing about Papua New Guinea," Jean Thomas said. "We'd have to climb mountains and try and convince people not to hunt tree kangaroos, which they'd been hunting for thousands of years."
Ukraine crisis: Fighting rages in Slaviansk, residents flee
June 5, 2014 - 1:58PM
Alissa de Carbonnel
Slaviansk: Ukrainian government forces battled separatists with artillery and automatic weapons in a second day of fighting in and around Slaviansk, forcing many residents to flee.
The Kiev government, trying to break rebellions by pro-Russia militias, said over 300 rebels had been killed in the past 24 hours in the "anti-terrorist operation" centred on the eastern town, a strategically located separatist stronghold.
Rebels denied this, saying losses among the Ukrainian forces during an offensive begun on Tuesday exceeded theirs.
At an army checkpoint on the edge of town, heavy artillery shelling could be heard while a plume of black smoke rose above the outskirts. Automatic gunfire rattled out from nearby fields. Families fled the fighting through a barbed-wire checkpoint with only as much as they could carry.
In Kirchner's 'winning decade' Argentina's poor may lose (+video)
The slums of Buenos Aires, called villas miserias, grew by 50 percent from 2001 to 2010. The government also has not released any poverty data this year, causing critics to pounce.
From a rooftop in the heart of the Villa 21-24 slum, it’s impossible to see the polluted river just a couple hundred yards away. The view is obstructed by a precarious jungle of orange cinder-block buildings, in some places reaching four stories high. Down below, the lives of some of Argentina’s poorest people play out on hardpan soccer fields and in crooked alleyways that cleave entire blocks.
so they have started expanding upward.
The image of slums swelling across Argentina is a problematic one for Kirchnerismo, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s political model that is centered on social equality. Similar to other leftist administrations in the region, her government has made wealth distribution through social benefits for the poor a cornerstone of her six years in office.
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