As exit polls predict a hung verdict to India's month-long general elections, results for which are expected late Saturday, the only certainty is that a handful of top female politicians firmly hold the keys to the formation of the next government.

Painstaking efforts by Chinese leadership to maintain the cloak of official silence over the crackdown of a 1989 pro-democracy movement backfired this week when Hong Kong released explosive clandestine memoirs of an ousted reformist party leader.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with Pres. Barack Obama in Washington next Monday, amid speculation that their two administrations may be heading for a confrontation worse than any they have known since 1991-92.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is attempting to reinvent itself with the global financial crisis, in the process using the opportunity to promote policies that exacerbate the recession by shrinking rather than growing economies.

Women’s rights groups have urged the establishment of a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission in Zimbabwe as part of bringing to justice people who committed human rights violations - including sexual abuse against women - during the run-up to a second-round presidential vote in June 2008.

Israel has found a cheap and easy way to get rid of its waste, much of it hazardous: dump it into the West Bank. A few Palestinians can be bought, the rest are in no position to complain.

In the months since U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have taken office, there has been lots of noise made about the relationship between the two men and their respective countries.

A surge in reports of missing children has set off alarm across the Egyptian countryside. The fears are being fed both by reports and rumour.

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.

In recent years, Egypt has witnessed increasing participation by women in grassroots political activism. Local civil rights advocates attribute the phenomenon to novel means of communication and organisation, especially the social networking website Facebook.