MUMBAI: CNN has announced the appointment of anchor cum correspondent Anjali Rao to the newsroom team based at the network’s Asia Pacific regional headquarters in Hong Kong. Rao is to co-anchor the primetime evening news program World News Asia alongside Andrew Stevens.

In her career to date, Rao has covered a broad portfolio of major news stories including the attacks of 9/11, the aftermath of the Bali bombings, the Asian Tsunami, the war in Iraq and the South Asian earthquake.

“Anjali has reported from and anchored coverage of the most significant global news stories of the past ten years,” said CNN Asia Pacific managing editor Jill Dougherty. “We’re delighted to add someone of Anjali's award winning experience to our Hong Kong based team,” she added.

Rao takes up her post following a decade at broadcasters in Australia, Asia and Europe where she held a variety of positions, most recently as a presenter at the Sky News channel in London. She started her career as a producer and reporter at Hong Kong’s Wharf Cable Television (now i-cable) and also spent three years based in the region as the principal anchor for Star News Asia.

Rao worked on Channel 7’s ‘Today Tonight’ program based in Melbourne, Australia before joining Hong Kong’s Star News Asia. Whilst at Star TV she won the top prize at the 2004 Amnesty International Human Rights Press Awards for her story ‘Toxic Trail’, a ‘Focus Asia’ piece on the effects of widespread use of pesticide in southern India. In the summer of 2004 Rao moved to the UK and took up a position as a presenter for the British terrestrial broadcaster Five’s ‘Five News’ program and the cable and satellite channel Sky News, informs an official release.