Campaigners are asking the Azerbaijan government to introduce radical reforms early to avoid a popular uprising sweeping the Arab world.

A new quasi-civilian government has taken over in Burma, but diplomats, analysts and pro-democracy activists are dismissing it as nothing more than 'old wine in a new bottle'.

In the 1970s, French oyster breeders introduced the Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas) to the Bay of Biscay to diversify the area’s species and develop the commercial oyster industry.

The political currents that sweep across the Middle East often surge out of Iran, form treacherous eddies in Lebanon and Iraq, then slam into the front door of Ahmad Rasem El-Nafis' apartment in the northern Egyptian city of Mansoura.

On Apr. 15, Michael Molefhe and Brandon Sampson will appeal against their death sentences in the Court of Appeals in the Botswanan capital, Gaborone.

After two commissions and close to a decade of consultations, Zambia's constitutional redrafting process crashed when the new constitution failed to win parliamentary approval. Politicians, civil society and ordinary citizens seem uncertain whether to laugh or cry.

Martha Karua fears nothing and no one, but when her adversaries look back at her long track record in politics, they must get nervous. This previously staunch supporter of Mwai Kibaki resigned as justice minister in 2009, and will challenge all comers for the presidency at the head of her own party next year.

The Xingu river flows around small isles and islands and across rapids and waterfalls in Brazil's Amazon jungle, and has a dramatically reduced flow during dry season. Navigating it presents constant hurdles and risks.

Growing government harassment of civil society organisations (CSOs), restrictions on Internet use, and persecution of vulnerable minorities constituted three of the most worrisome trends that slowed the spread of human rights around the globe in 2010, according to latest annual edition of the State Department's massive 'Country Reports'.

With hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in destitution as the country flounders under political, economic and climate wreckage, critics say celebrations of the inevitable profits of disaster capitalism have already begun between the right- wing President-elect Michel Martelly and his neoliberal allies in Washington.