Buenos Aires - Argentina's agricultural producers on Friday began a six-day strike seeking changes in government policy towards the sector.

Farmers held assemblies by the side of roads in several areas around the country, as they stopped delivering cereal crops for export and cattle for domestic and foreign consumption.

Farmers' federations called for the latest strike based on the difficult situation following a severe drought, the fall in the price of their produce in international markets and what they see as the lack of a suitable policy for the sector on the part of the centre- left government.

Buenos Aires - Argentina's government and farmer leaders exchanged harsh words Wednesday, following the rural organizations' call to another strike from Friday amidst one of the country's worst droughts in 100 years.

The four farmers' unions said late Tuesday that they would stop delivering cereal crops for export and cattle for domestic and foreign consumption for six days starting Friday.

Farming is one of the engines of the Argentine economy, and its leaders managed to block earlier this year a government bill to increase tariffs on the export of soybean and sunflower seeds through a series of strikes.

Buenos Aires/Quito - Ecuador's new constitution, approved in a referendum on Sunday, dwarfs its international counterparts by its 444 articles and ambitious goals.

Social justice, cultural diversity, equal rights, environmentalism, strengthening the president's role and more citizen participation, are all enshrined in the new constitution.

As are the protection of national sovereignty, free health care and education, transparent and efficient government and even the right to "Sumak Kawsay," which in the indiginous Quechua language means the "good life," are listed.

Buenos Aires/Quito - The draft and approval of a new constitution with socialist underpinnings is progressing peacefully in Ecuador, in sharp contrast to similar reforms that have taken Bolivia close to a civil war in recent weeks.

Ecuadorians are to vote Sunday in a referendum on the constitution proposed by President Rafael Correa, and according to opinion polls some 55 per cent of the voters will favour the new text, with 444 articles.

However, just as in Bolivia, the conservative and the relatively wealthy in the impoverished northern Andean country are unhappy about Ecuador's apparent swing to the left and about the withdrawal of pure capitalist precepts.

Buenos Aires - Buenos Aires is considered one of the most beautiful cities in South America and it attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists from all over the world every year.

However, when it comes to environmental protection, the changing city governments perform badly. And the problems are as big as the metropolis of some 13 million people on the Rio de la Plata.

While people across the globe have slowly developed a growing consciousness of climate change, hardly any of that can is evident in the Argentine capital.

Anyone who brings their own fabric bag to a supermarket instead of using one of the free plastic bags on offer will probably be brushed off as crazy.

Buenos Aires/La Paz - These are difficult times for US diplomacy in South America. Bolivia and Venezuela expelled the US ambassadors from their countries, in aggressive and often abusive, televised announcements by their presidents.

It started with Evo Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president and an ally of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. In a dramatic television appearance Wednesday he said: "Without fear of the empire, I declare today to the Bolivian people that Mr Goldberg, the ambassador of the United States, is persona non grata."