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ARGENTINA: Prostitution, though illegal, thrives in this country. Sex workers tired of being forced to pay kickbacks to police are demanding government recognition and have formed the Association of Women Prostitutes of Argentina. If approved, it would be Latin America’s first such union and a step toward legal prostitution. Proponents say brothel owners forge covert alliances with police and exploit minors, undocumented workers and foreigners who are practically kidnapped from their countries and forced to work for food, said the woman lawmaker who presented the bill to legalize prostitution. One prostitute has formed a separate group for sex workers who want to help each other leave the trade through education and job training. “More than 90 percent of us want to leave prostitution because the stigma that it leaves with you stays until you die,” she said. “It is a means of survival, not a job.”

BRAZIL: Sao Paulo, planted when Portuguese Jesuit missionaries began building a chapel, has celebrated its 450th anniversary. It is the world’s second-largest city, behind Tokyo and ahead of Mexico City. Sao Paulo residents per capita earn $9,000 annually, double the national average, but the city remains poor with more than 2,000 slum areas of cardboard and wire, and 400,000 living in more than 1,600 concrete tenement apartments. One seamstress who moved to Sao Paulo said she fears crime most of all with 4,141 murders in 2003. In contrast, New York registered 596. Brazil has the world’s highest firearm homicide rate. Just before Christmas in an attempt to curb murders, the government virtually outlawed handgun possession. The seamstress said she’s seen people killed in the street.

EASTER ISLAND: This South Pacific island’s heritage is in peril, but the Rapa Nui indigenous tongue is revitalizing native culture. Chile currently rules the island torn between embracing globalization and rescuing this endangered language spoken by 2,000 people. Indigenous Rapa Nui leaders want political autonomy or independence for the island to stop more Spanish-speakers from moving there. Says one Rapa Nui teacher, “You realize something of your people is being lost, the spirit of our people.”

GUATEMALA: President Oscar Berger said that the government’s distribution of 970 tons of donated food relief to 77,000 people marks step one in a national drive to wipe out poverty. Ten villages of starving people will receive food rations provided by foreign governments and NGOs. A government spokesperson said state funds weren’t used because there were none to spare. Government census figures reveal that 60 percent of Guatemalans live in extreme poverty.

KENYA: The International Bible Society has released a contemporary-language Luo New Testament for 3.8 million Luo speakers in Kenya and other parts of East Africa. More than 1,000 church and government leaders welcomed the translation at a dedication ceremony in Kisumu. About 70 percent of the Luo people cannot understand the formal, archaic Luo Bible translated by early missionaries. Its release culminated more than 10 years of work by an IBS-East Africa translation team. IBS plans to release the full Luo Bible in 2005.

NEPAL: Two-and-a-half years ago, Crown Prince Dipendra was furious because his mother refused to let him marry his girlfriend. Armed with an assault rifle and high on whiskey and hashish, he killed most of his family, including his parents who were king and queen, in Katmandu’s royal palace. He then killed himself. Gyanendra, the king’s brother, who was away from Katmandu during Dipendra’s rampage, is now king. Greatest among new King Gyanendra’s many problems is the growing Maoist insurrection, one of Asia’s most deadly and brutal conflicts. Government control outside Katmandu is slipping. Nepal watchers fear the country is on the brink of anarchy. Police and the army stand accused of executing hundreds of Maoists. Mercy Corps reports that Maoist crowds have watched their leaders break every bone in a “class enemy’s” body, then skin him and cut off his ears, lips, tongue and nose, before sawing the body in half or burning it. Little has been done about grinding poverty that fuels the conflict; 42 percent of Nepalese earn less than $1 a day.

SAUDI ARABIA: Sheikh Abdulaziz bin Abdullah al-Sheikh, the nation’s grand mufti (highest Islamic cleric), says unveiled women are the root of all evil. His words followed a January business conference where women mingled without veils among men and Saudi Arabia’s top businesswoman called for reform. Newspapers printed their pictures on front pages. The mufti said the women’s actions could cause “evil and catastrophe.”

SOUTH KOREA: In the 1970s and ’80s, Cho Yang-eun led the country’s biggest criminal gang. In 1990, while in solitary confinement during an 18-year prison sentence, he came to Christ. In 1995, after serving his sentence, he began studies at Hansei University. In 2002 he entered Hansei’s graduate school of theology. Last month Cho, 53, earned his degree. He wants to be a missionary. “I’ll devote myself to helping the poor all over the world and telling the grace of God to them,” Cho said at the ceremony.

UGANDA: When the Episcopal Church USA (ECUSA) approved the openly gay bishop of New Hampshire last year, Anglicans of Uganda formally announced their ties with ECUSA were broken. Then, when ECUSA proposed to provide aid for displaced people living in camps and send a delegation to the new Archbishop of Uganda’s enthronement in January, it was turned down. “The gospel of Jesus Christ is not for sale, even among the poorest of us who have no money,” responded the Ugandan Archbishop Living-stone Mpalanyi Nkoyoyo. “Eternal life, obedience to Jesus Christ, and conforming to his Word are more important.”

UKRAINE: The government is trying to control the internet, which threatens cyber-journalism in the former Soviet republic. Parliament has given initial approval to two laws that would widen government powers to stifle press freedom. For its part the government says the laws will combat terrorism. Some see this as a move away from European-style democracy, and an aim to quiet the opposition. One journalist said, “These new laws will give them a legal basis to shut us down.” Neighboring Belarus has one of the world’s most restrictive internet policies that leaves opposition groups with virtually no way to reach the public.