HEALTH: China Battling to Contain Swine Flu

China is battling hard to contain the spread of the swine flu after stringent border checks and draconian quarantine measures of Mexican nationals failed to prevent the virus from entering the country.

POLITICS-US: Rights Groups Slam Bid to Suppress Abuse Pics

President Barack Obama’s decision Wednesday to object to the planned release of photos showing abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan has drawn quiet praise from the military and some in Congress – and outspoken scorn from human rights advocates, a number of legal scholars and religious leaders, and many on the left of his Democratic Party.

SRI LANKA: Intl Condemnation Mounts, Along With Body Count

As the humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka takes a turn for the worse, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is sending one of his most senior officials to take stock of the situation in the war zone, where hundreds of civilians are being killed both by government and rebel forces.

POLITICS: ‘Women Are Born Leaders’

When Margaret Mensah-Williams walked down the steps after presiding over the Namibian parliament for the first time, male parliamentarians rushed to ask her how she became so good at chairing the house.

MIDEAST: ‘Hamas Against Zionist Ideology, Not Judaism’

A founding member of Hamas says he hates all weapons and insists that his organisation is not anti-Jewish.

MIDEAST: Israel Expanding ‘Beautifully’ In Jerusalem

Even as Pope Benedict XVI tries his best during his current Holy Land visit to pay reverence to the attachment of all three monotheistic faiths to Jerusalem, on the ground a less lofty imprint is already furthering Israeli control over the Holy City in a way that could threaten the claims of all but Jews to Jerusalem.

BOTSWANA: Deep Divisions Remain Over Media Law

While the international theme for World Press Freedom Day was "Fostering Dialogue, Mutual Understanding and Reconciliation", the Botswana government and the media seemed to take the opposite route - taking turns to snub each other’s calls for dialogue.

NEPAL: Explosive Reminders of War

Eighteen army deminers are hard at work in the minefields of Wami Taksar in central Nepal. The deminers start out early in the morning, before the sun is too hot. They move meticulously from one mine to another, carefully excavating each one, and they take breaks to stay alert.

MADAGASCAR: Education Hampered by Lack of Clean Water

Because most schools in Madagascar have no access to running water, lack of hygiene and sanitation have become a major problem for children on the Southern African island. Many pupils fall sick regularly, are unable to attend classes and hence don’t perform well at school.

RIGHTS-US: Senate Panel Probes Legality of Torture Memos

"An ethical train wreck" was the phrase used by one witness to describe the legal reasoning behind the Justice Department’s recently released memos justifying the use of waterboarding and other forms of "enhanced interrogation techniques".

CARIBBEAN: Turks and Caicos Seeks Referendum on British Rule

Premier Galmo Williams came to the United Nations Second International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism conference here with a simple message: Britain must withdraw its threat to suspend the constitution of the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI), or better still, allow his people to determine their future in a referendum.

POLITICS-US: Back to Military Commissions?

Human rights advocates and legal scholars fear that the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama may resurrect the military commissions designed by his predecessor to try Guantanamo detainees after Obama’s 120-day moratorium on proceedings expires on May 20.

RIGHTS-IRAN: Day of Protests for Jailed AIDS Doctors

A handful of motivated doctors, HIV/AIDS and human rights activists held rallies Tuesday in New York City and 20 countries to protest the imprisonment of Iranian doctors Arash and Kamiar Aleai.

MIDEAST: Families Down to a Meal a Day

Um Abdullah cannot remember the last time she was able to feed meat to her eight children. She does know that for the past week the single meal she cooked for them each day consisted only of lentils. And that on one day, she had received aid coupons from the United Nations, which she subsequently sold to buy tomatoes and eggplant at the local market.

MIGRATION: Human Beings Can’t Be ‘Illegal’, Book Argues

Julio Guerrero came from Mexico to the U.S. state of North Carolina on a legal, H2-A temporary visa to work on a tobacco farm in 2002. After only a few weeks on the job, his fingers began to hurt and before long his fingernails had fallen off.

RELIGION-NAMIBIA: Finding Sanctuary in Islam

Daisy Duck is the first to greet visitors to the Soweto Islamic Centre, from a television in the lounge of this former pre-primary school in Katutura, Windhoek’s oldest township. Beyond a kitchen is a humble, light-filled prayer room, the ground covered with carpets.

AFRICA: Global Crisis Hits Hard – ‘But Don’t Despair’

The financial crisis that has sent economies reeling the world over is beginning to adversely affect Africa, threatening to plunge many people back into poverty and thwarting efforts to meet the target of halving the share of the population living on less than one dollar a day by 2015.

MIDEAST: Pope Failing the ‘Test of Pain’

Before stepping into Jerusalem's interfaith and inter-political Middle East minefields, Pope Benedict XVI had posited himself as a "pilgrim of peace". But, only hours into his spiritual mission, the Pope found himself crashing up against the walls erected by pain - Jewish pain and Muslim pain, the memory of the Holocaust, and Palestinian pain of the continued Israeli occupation.

MIDEAST: U.S. Thaw with Syria Hits Stumbling Blocks

U.S. President Barack Obama issued a statement on May 8 calling for the renewal of sanctions on Syria, which were set to expire on Monday. The declaration came at the end of a busy week in which both high-level U.S. officials and the Iranian president visited the Syrian capital, Damascus.

POLITICS-US: Congress Resists Guantanamo Transfers

As lawmakers amped up the outcry against releasing Guantanamo "terrorists in our neighbourhoods", France agreed to accept a "cleared" Guantanamo prisoner and human rights groups continued to press for release of 17 Chinese Uigurs who the U.S. government has declared to be no threat to national security.

RIGHTS-US: Lawmakers Try to Block New Abuse Photos

Civil libertarians are condemning a call by two influential U.S. senators for the White House to block the impending release of photographs showing detainees being abused by U.S. military personnel at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at other U.S. detention facilities in the Middle East and elsewhere.