Sri Lanka goes into a frenzy this month as it plays co-host to the 2011 Cricket World Cup. Conservationists hope the national pasttime will share national and international media attention with an endangered Sri Lankan resident: the elephant.

Cambodia must ensure it offers a safe haven to asylum seekers, rights groups say, following the government’s closure this week of a United Nations-run refugee centre, home to dozens of Montagnards from Vietnam.

Five years ago China pledged to ban smoking in all indoor public places by January of this year. That promise remains unfulfilled and is today symbolic of the lack of progress made in the fight against tobacco use in China, where up to a million people die of smoking-related complications each year.

The Egyptian revolution, and the threat to autocratic Arab regimes all over the region, have forced rapid changes on the Palestinian political scene - with major players Hamas and Fatah scrambling to catch up.

Human rights groups are asking the Cambodian government to ensure the safety of asylum seekers, amid reports it is planning to send back a group of Montagnards to Vietnam, where they face harassment and persecution.

With less than a year remaining for parliamentary and presidential elections in Russia, human rights activists and opposition forces have become targets of political intimidation and frequent harassment by law enforcement agencies. They see an effort to exclude them from the country’s democratic process.

Four days after the stunning departure of Hosni Mubarak from the presidential palace in Cairo, analysts here are still trying to determine whether his ouster represents a revolution heralding the advent of democratic governance or a coup d'etat staged by the already-dominant military.

When U.S. President Barack Obama raised the curtain on a six- year, six-billion-dollar Global Health Initiative (GHI) in May 2009, he appeared to be embarking on the path of promises that paved the way to his election victory earlier that year.

The number of reporters in detention around the world has reached the highest level in 14 years, with China and Iran claiming top spots as jailhouses for journalists, according to the annual 'Attacks on the Press' report released by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Tuesday.

As peace negotiations over Sudan's Darfur region come to a close in Doha, Qatar and a number of issues related to last month's referendum remain unresolved, several Washington-based advocacy groups have warned against the pitfalls of losing focus on a comprehensive peace agreement for Darfur.