The United States should double aid to Central America and focus it more on programmes designed to strengthen the region's criminal justice institutions to help curb the skyrocketing violence in the region, according to a new report published by an influential foreign policy group.

Two years ago, Ashkan Delanvar was arrested by Iranian authorities and held in poor conditions for 14 days before he was sentenced to 10 months in prison.

The economic crisis plaguing many countries in the European Union has forced Central America to look at preventive measures to mitigate the effects in this region, which could include a decline in tourism, migrant remittances, exports and investment.

It's a deal that's been more than 15 years in the making and the unmaking. The United States and Japan have been struggling since the 1990s to transform the U.S. military presence on the island of Okinawa, the southernmost prefecture of Japan.

Krishnaveni Nakkeeran has fled the country of her birth twice and returned twice in the last two decades. The 36-year-old mother of four from the northern Jaffna peninsula in Sri Lanka first fled the bloody civil war to India when she was just 16 years old in 1990.

Aggeliki Anagnostopoulou (30) sits in a corner of the huge room that volunteers from the new party, Independent Greeks, are using as a headquarters for their pre-election campaign in the lead up to polling day on May 6.

Last week, in a lecture hall at the University of Illinois Chicago, 2003 Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi took a reality many of us working in human rights know well, and drove it home with a story from her own nation, a land her government says she is no longer allowed to call home.

Fifteen million babies, or more than one in 10 infants, are born prematurely each year. Over one million die soon after birth, or survive to face a lifetime of health complications, says a new report by the World Health Organisation and co- sponsors.

Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese activist, has said he wants to leave for the U.S. rather than stay in China, throwing into doubt a deal used to coax him out of the U.S. embassy in Beijing and defuse an impasse that has strained China-U.S. ties.

Cashew nut growers in the southern Senegalese region of Casamance are complaining bitterly that intermediaries are cutting them out of a fair share of the profits.