BUENOS AIRES - Officials in San Carlos de Bariloche, a city in southern Argentina, decreed this month that foods produced with genetically modified material must be identified as such.

The measure obligates supermarkets and groceries in this tourist destination city to display a list of items they sell that include products which originate from laboratory-manipulated material.

Argentina is the world's second leading producer of transgenic crops, after the United States. It is because of these products that the European Union resists buying the South American country's agricultural exports.

The environmental group Greenpeace applauded the decision of the Bariloche authorities and has appealed to the Argentine Congress to require labeling of transgenic foods nationwide.

HAVANA - Smoking is harmful to the human body, but a protein found in the green tobacco leaf could save people who are in coma and may provide relief for those suffering post-traumatic stress, say Cuban scientists.

The Cuban Tobacco Research Institute obtained the protein known as ''Fraction 1'' (F1) from tobacco leaves. The protein contains all the essential amino acids, in concentrations comparable to soy, according to official reports.

The researchers point out that F1 could be used as a nutritional additive in foods, but more important is its therapeutic use. It aids in the recovery from coma, or from post-traumatic stress, and could be useful in treating chronic renal deficiencies.

CARACAS - The Venezuelan government is to study the impact of a power line construction project extending from Venezuela into northern Brazil on the customs and lifestyles of the indigenous communities of the southeastern Great Savannah.

Research will begin in the settlements of the Pemon Indians near the 1,500-km route of the electrical transmission line, a symbol of physical integration between Venezuela and Brazil that is sharply criticized by environmentalist and indigenous groups.

Plans are already in the works to train the native groups in self-sufficient economic activities, such as fisheries, and in educational activities that help them to preserve their cultures.

QUITO - The clearing of mangrove swamps in order to make way for shrimp raising pools continues uninterrupted in the Ecuadorian province of Esmeraldas, warns the non-governmental National Mangrove Defense Association.

Fishing communities in the area affirm that there has been no end to the cutting down of mangroves, as was verified in April by leaders of the association and of the Esmeraldas Environmental Directorate, which at the time recorded that 50 hectares of mangroves had been destroyed.

Ecuador's 1998 Constitution bans the clearing of mangrove swamps because it harms the coastal Pacific ecosystems, and a governmental decree has put the area where these forests grow under state protection.