An exclusive video report.

Listen to Clare Blumer’s audio interview with Dr Allen Frances.

An update of the manual doctors use to diagnose mental illness has critics fearing a bonanza of over-medication.

Buddhist monks pit prayer against Cambodia’s desperate power needs and China’s profit motive.

Cambodia has turned to clearing its prehistoric forests for hydro-electricity dams. And China is only too eager to help.

What if the government could save hundreds of millions of dollars by listing a cheaper drug, shown to be just as effective as the one which costs the PBS more than any other medicine?

Really, it’s nothing to sniff at.

When US Attorney General, Eric Holder, jets into New Zealand next week, he can expect to find hundreds of people attempting to film him — and set his actions to music.

Medicine is broken, says Bad Pharma author Ben Goldacre. In this audio interview, he talks about holding the medical industry to account.

Following revelations that easily spread asbestos remained unaddressed at Villawood, the NSW Police Association is threatening to ban officers from  the controversial detention centre.

Reports of dangerous asbestos contamination, revealed under Freedom of Information, show hazards have not been addressed at Villawood, the nation’s largest mainland detention centre.

Europe still maintains a dozen monarchies. As a new king settles into the Dutch throne, can the cash-strapped continent afford to support these expensive spongers any longer?

By law medical professionals must keep up their education — providing plenty of opportunities for pharmaceutical companies to help out. But do free flights, free dinners and consultancy fees put doctors in Big ...

That’s what Big Pharma reports spending on educational events in Australia. The Global Mail’s new database exposes the murky relationships between drug-makers and doctors.

A Global Mail investigation charts the troubled path to market of Pradaxa, the controversial stroke prevention drug, as its PBS listing hangs in the balance.

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Mexico’s teachers are armed, on the streets, and a big problem for the new government’s reform agenda. The Global Mail caught up with the protestors facing off against 3000 federal policemen on the road to ...

A notorious people smuggler named Hasan Ayoub appears to be back managing smuggling operations in Indonesia. His re-emergence demonstrates the power of reputation in a shadowy and lucrative business.

Testimony will be at the heart of the national Royal Commission into the institutional abuse of children; stories of damage left untreated, like a piece of unexploded ordnance buried deep in the psyche.

The role of record-keeping is close to the centre of what the royal commission into abuse is all about: the battle between the Closed and the Open Society.

Scenes of everyday life in Kiribati, a disappearing country.

Entering an end game against climate change, the President of Kiribati urges an orderly evacuation — “migration with dignity”.

Harnessing anti-Europe sentiment in Britain, UKIP leader Nigel Farage is dragging his party of “fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists” into the mainstream.

Cisarua is where people wait for the slow wheels of UN bureaucracy to turn, or for the sudden call from a smugglers’ agent: get ready, eat, we're leaving tonight. With his camera, Hazara refugee Barat Ali Batoor ...

Fear, corruption, boredom, smugglers, extortionists, Saudi sex tourists and temporary wives: such is life in the Indonesian resort town that has become limbo for asylum seekers.

Selling rice crackers to China made him a billionaire. Buying media in Taiwan is making him a bogeyman.

A temporary treaty fix — designed to unlock a huge gas field for Woodside Petroleum — has expired. This could  unravel decades of Australia’s scheming both with its tiny new neighbour Timor-Leste and its largest, ...

在中国，被判刑的罪犯的孩子在法律上不被认为是孤儿。他们被家庭和社会抛弃，常常在大街上流浪，直到像“晨露联盟”（Morning Tears）这样的慈善组织找到他们

Here’s the plan: Stop rats from killing rare species, with a poison-packing flying squadron carpet-bombing virgin rainforest.

Tracking the epidemic of smalltown corruption that has crippled Spain — and Europe with it.

In China, the children of executed criminals do not legally qualify as orphans. Spurned by their families, abandoned by the state, these children languish in the streets — unless charities such as Morning Tears find ...

They are the forgotten victims of crime, cast onto the mean streets of some of the world's biggest cities.

The economic threat of falling birth rates.

Fiji’s sunsets and tropical beaches make for beautiful photographs. But cameras wielded by ordinary Fijians are exposing a darker side to the island paradise.

We are now in the middle of perhaps the greatest demographic change in recorded history.

The history of British settlement was written into sandstone by Australia’s Aboriginal people  – but a mixture of disregard and “progress” has put these precious rock-art records at risk.

Rich-lister Gina Rinehart, one of the world’s biggest uranium companies, and countless other prospectors are all lining up to mine landscapes holding the planet’s most ancient artworks.

Aung San Suu Kyi has made some new friends on her way from icon to politician: Burma’s former military men and crony capitalists are getting cosy. The country’s minorities, not so much.

Ice contains a “memory” within its compressed crystals that we can now recover and turn into climate records. From the savage Antarctic comes a team of ice-core drillers — and arriving in New Zealand ...

Early Inheritance Syndrome is tearing families apart — and it’s about to get worse, with aged-care reforms putting the family home in the balance.

In other countries, voter anger has spilled over into violence and xenophobia, but in Italy Beppe Grillo is winning with a form of vigilante politics.

The conclave gathering to replace Pope Benedict XVI, who resigns today, is a crisis conclave. Can reform emerge?

TGM’s report on the Mexican villagers turning vigilantes, reclaiming their communities from violent gangs, has been updated with SBS Dateline for broadcast in Australia on Tuesday, April 2, at 9.30pm ...

Sermons, SMS and programs socialising children to reject violence: these are some of the responses that emerged from Papua New Guinea after our story about the ongoing belief in sorcery — and its brutal ...

On a speaking tour of Australia, the controversial Dutch populist is being touted as a prophet of “Freedom, Islam and the West”.

Robotics in many parts of the world is driven by military aims. Pacifist Japan takes a different approach: This is a digital love story.

Belief in black magic persists in Papua New Guinea, where women are increasingly branded as witches — with horrific consequences.

Rome has an election campaign underway — oh, and one very large financial corruption scandal.

The next pope will need to come to grips with the generations of systemic sexual abuse within the Catholic church. But in Australia, the spotlight is now on the credibility of protocols set up by the church to handle ...

Two women wanted to marry — one Texan (no gay marriage there), the other Australian (nor there). So how did the British help them tie the knot in Cambodia (not allowed there, either), even before the UK vote this ...

So, print is all but washed up? Not according to one of the world’s most successful magazines, which, against all odds, is still making money — lots of money.

Chasing their slice of China's raging appetite, tens of thousands of Africans traders are settling uneasily in the ghettoes of Guangzhou.

Parents are promised that drugs like Ritalin will improve their children’s grades, mood and social skills. One mother explains the choice she made when her son was diagnosed with ADHD.

Will the West Bank issue never be settled? Ordinary Israelis despair as the political hardliners tighten their grip on the reins in the lead-up to Israel’s January 22 elections.

A timeline of development along the ‘hungry mile’.

New cabinet documents from Western Australia reveal casino magnate James Packer's met with Premier Colin Barnett about a huge development near his Burswood complex. Is it similar to how Packer's flexed his political ...

Even while rejecting some diplomatic forays, global outsider North Korea is re-opening its embassy in Australia’s capital.

In the centre of New Zealand’s North Island is a patch of green that remains forever Middle Earth — well, for at least as long as money grows on fake trees.

Speeches too good, or too misjudged, not to revisit, issues too vital not to read direct from source. Catch up this holiday season, as we unearth a couple of gems each day.

In a village near the Sea of Galilee, archaeologists have struck a first-century synagogue. Did Jesus once preach at its long-buried pulpit?

PETA’s anti-mulesing campaign has produced million dollars of research, an album of music titled ‘We Love Sheep’ and a decade of protests — is an alternative to the brutal procedure finally near?

Deutsche Bank’s reputation is besmirched, bringing a little light relief to Europe’s Greek tragedy.

The Global Mail investigates rumours of a mysterious plague down-river from a giant gold mine in remote Papua New Guinea, and uncovers disturbing questions about the flow of benefits from the resources boom.

So few indigenous Australians have played cricket at the elite level, and Cricket Australia isn’t sure what to do about it.

How fast can a new government dismantle an entire suite of environmental regulations? Surprisingly fast. Amazingly fast. Case in point: pro-development, pro-mining, Can-do Campbell Newman and the Australian state of ...

After another devastating bomb blast in Quetta, there is even more fear in the violent streets of Afghanistan. Australia is warning Hazaras not to risk seeking asylum there though.

The Global Mail investigates how Australian authorities are co-operating with corrupt local authorities who bend the law to keep would-be refugees trapped in a country that they desperately want to escape.

Australia’s Northern Territory has seen crocodile numbers soar since the territory government put protections in place. Now though, the humans are being taken again. Is it time to let in the big-game hunters?

How many millions can Beckham squeeze out of a few more matches?

It’s Denmark’s ‘The West Wing’: the TV series ‘Borgen’ has done for politics what Nordic-Noir has done for screen police and thriller lit.

When kids think being smart is not part of their identity, they fail. One indigenous educator’s story of school transformation.

Do we want to live longer if it just means more old age?

As an amateur Shannon O’Connell could have been a contender — but the pressures of motherhood have forced her to turn pro in a last-ditch attempt to make a career out of boxing.

The world’s best known ratings agency has been hit with a billion-dollar civil law suit from the United States Justice Department for misleading and deceiving investors leading up to the financial crisis. But it was ...

From Spain, the latest on the splintering state of the EU.

In photos and audio interviews, a look of who supports the new wave of cruising.

Here are a few key points on the scheme that would radically reform disability care in Australia.

A mother grieves for her daughter’s lost potential. But she believes the proposed National Disability Insurance Scheme, if done right, could deliver a better life for her and her family.

The Israelis swear it was HIV, the Palestinians swear it was polonium… will digging up his bones settle anything?

Hanan Angalo works as a cleaner at a western Sydney school. In another life, she was “Mama”, the wife of Commander Yousif Kuwa of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army.

Are national parks saving Australia’s wildlife? Well, it is difficult to say for sure, but the country has the worst mammal extinction rate in the world.

Some 11 million people in the US are illegal immigrants, many propping up the economy by working for low cash, no benefits. Will President Obama free the dishwashers?

Iron Dome — Israel’s revolutionary rocket-stopping defence shield — may have done more to avoid a Gaza ground war than any diplomatic fancy footwork from Morsi, Clinton et al.

The whimsical imagination that Victoria Roberts has long breathed into her drawings, cartoons and stage characters comes alive in her first novel — a newly broke family of eccentrics settles, along with the contents ...

It’s austerity o’clock in the EU — bad timing for Moet-swilling papershufflers?

Not even the cops will venture across all the violent divisions between enemies in Pakistan’s blood-soaked megacity. Only the guys driving the make-shift ambulances do that. No gloves, either. One night in ...

A Nepalese doctor and some cheap but revolutionary cataract surgery have given sight to a hundred thousand blind people in some of the world’s poorest countries.

John Cummings was a married father of three daughters until he turned 52. That year he did something that he had wanted to do his whole life. He became Katherine.

Follow the trail of turkey tails for a feast of understanding about — no, really! — world trade. It’s all about extra stuffing.

Muhammad Morsi, the man who sprang from the Arab Spring to lead Egypt, is at the centre of Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire talks. But Morsi has problems of his own.

At your service in Burma, President Obama: former political detainees are giving each other — and their customers — a real lift, via the Golden Harp Taxi Service.

Amid tragic fallout from the film ‘Innocence of Muslims’, a Sydney playwright saw comic potential — in the porn past of the film’s director.

As Israel and Hamas trade threats via Twitter, the missiles fly and innocent people die.

A royal commission into child sexual abuse could go a long way to acknowledging the pain of victims, and allowing Christians to once more have faith in their institutions. But how should the terms of inquiry be ...

When Gough Whitlam launched his election campaign in Blacktown 40 years ago, a nervous young photographer waiting in the wings captured a defining image of the man who would be prime minister.

In 1975 Abel Guterres took a chance, leaving East Timor for Australia. Meet the former tram driver who became East Timor’s ambassador to Australia.

Don’t be distracted by the shelling from Syria. In Israel, the real — and suddenly intensifying — danger is in Gaza, where tens of thousands have moved into bomb shelters, as the country prepares international public ...

A captivating story of love, death, cannibalism and a 50-year medical riddle in the hills of Papua New Guinea.

After 50 years of killing in Colombia, and bloody hands wherever you look, this week will see formal peace talks between the government and Marxist rebels. Is it time to negotiate  — or is the state balking just as ...

Pain medication fentanyl is liberally prescribed by Australian doctors, with increasingly fatal consequences.

A beautiful mosaic pilfered from the Palestinian front during World War I now hangs in the Canberra’s Australian War Memorial, shoved awkwardly behind a newly built wall, testament to a growing national ...

Jane Goodall left secretarial school, moved in with the chimps and revolutionised the conservation movement. At 78, her field work is different — and more urgent.

Crunching the numbers on the Communist Party.

Corruption-busting, Beijing-style has made wrist-management a political necessity during this week’s changing of the political guard in China.

As an opera singer, Emma Slaytor sang in Carmen and performed on stage with Joan Sutherland. Then she became a litigator, specialising in medical defence work.

Time is already up for many of Australia’s endangered animals. It’s just a matter of when — and which first. Today, we’re talking extinction lists.

Trying to manage threatened species on limited budgets? We reveal the extinction lists that aim to save more plants and animals — by deciding what we can’t save.

There is another race going on between a Mormon and a minority candidate — for an Arizona seat in the US Senate. But this one will be decided by Latinos — both coveted and held at bay in American politics.

Fresh out of the joint, disgraced media baron Conrad Black is charging his way through an image rehab tour, insulting everyone in his path.

Riding jubilee mojo and royal romance, Prince Charles visits Australia, a country still ultimately ruled by Buckingham Palace. What will republicans do?

There are some 300 butlers in Australia. Here is how three more were added to the service.

As a vote on Palestinian statehood draws near at the United Nations, Australia’s former foreign minister calls for a certain peace with Israel.

The Dutch did. When the water's at your neck, it pays to be pragmatic.

By accident, choice or fate some of us transform our lives completely. Today, meet Xiao Tang Qin who was a concert violinist in Beijing and now plays for customers of his Sydney dumpling shop.

Syria’s civil war is playing out in Australia’s suburbs along sectarian lines — with some living in Sydney’s west too scared to speak, after beatings, a shooting and an alleged arson.

How safe is the Pacific rim, where 100 reactors in 10 years are planned, some in earthquake-prone, developing nations? Ask the fish.

There are good reasons — some ecological but mostly economic — to think the slowdown in demand for coal is not a slump, but the start of a post-coal world.

Archie Roach has emerged from grief and illness to produce the album of a lifetime.

Alarm bells are sounding over further coal seam gas drilling in northern NSW’s vast Pilliga State Forest: dead animals and a toxic chain of ponds, along with the release this week of a damning ecological report.

In the Philippines, religious devotion is taken to extremes.

Astronomers at an observatory in Chile are transforming our understanding of the universe.

The federal government has granted $10 million to ramp up the ABC's news division across radio, TV and digital. Here's how Aunty is poised to dominate Australian media with one hugely ambitious online market ...

Sydney Festival director Lieven Bertels ponders the challenges of creating a relevant, ticket-selling arts line-up when everyone’s got a show they want to flog — and your fellow festival ringmasters are both friend ...

Abdulwahab Tahhan, 24, spent his whole life in Aleppo. Last month, Abdul decided he had to see the war with his own eyes. This is what he saw.

Two eyewitness accounts from Sassine Square, where a car bomb left three dead, and many wounded.

It’s not just the asylum seekers who are frustrated on Nauru. The foreign minister has a few things to get off his chest, too.

Shady politicians and dodgy bankers sent Ireland reeling from foie gras to 14 per cent unemployment. But there’s no change to the low-down and dirty cash economy of the Ballinasloe Horse Fair.

In his reelection speech, Barack Obama proclaimed that “the best is yet to come” for America. But as Nick Bryant argues in this October essay, the States may be too divided to agree on even that.

A leaked report shows environment groups aren’t having the impact they’d like you to think they are.

They identified Australian outlaw Ned Kelly’s remains. But their main work involves unearthing the bones — and the lies — buried in war. Meet the crack team of forensic anthropologists transforming human-rights ...

To shuttle the Endeavour to its museum home, Los Angelenos took down street lights, power poles and hundreds of trees. What’s more, they took their beloved cars off the roads.

The United Nations was not happy with Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers — and that was before a refugee in the Nauru detention centre attempted suicide.

Flops, hits and collisions with Anne Bancroft: a daughter's life in the theatre, from napping the wings to wandering the world with her father in the next seat.

On a hill in the centre of Java, thousands of Muslims regularly turn up to a religious ritual with a surprising stipulation: to seek their fortunes, they must have sex with a stranger.

Alpha by subject ... or by dinner party seating rules? Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Geraldine Brooks on a shelving obsession.

A new IMF study rates John Howard's government as outstandingly wasteful — world class!  Our interactive tool lets you play with your tax dollars and see how you stack up against the spenders in Canberra on some ...

As dementia tugs at the mind, what happens to a life, a home, a loving relationship? Watch, read and listen to the stories of couples living through the long goodbye. We invite you to share your own stories, too.

Ten years ago, Jemaah Islamiah perpetrated the deadliest terrorist attack in Indonesian — and Australian — history. The suicide bombing of Bali’s Sari Club killed 202 people, 88 of them Australian. This is the story ...

With its tiny head and broad, meat-yielding flanks, the Australian barramundi sure ain’t pretty, but, to some at least, it represents earth’s best chance for sustainable aquaculture.

“I could see the death in front of me” — listen to the hair-raising reality of seeking asylum in Australia. Two ship-wrecked asylum seekers cheat death, make a daring escape, and now face the wrenching choices of a ...

If we want to keep eating, it’s time to stop treating our soil like dirt.

Does living near a windfarm really pose a credible health risk?

Wind farm opponents claim victory as a council in Victoria cuts property values before a single turbine goes up. But do their other concerns hold up?

Good artists copy, great artists steal. But in the digital age, photographic copyright is fading fast.

With bloody protests in the streets of Madrid, reports of Spain's recovery seem greatly exaggerated. Tell me again how we got to this point?

Argentina’s president is clocking up hours of face time on TV, but it is all on her own terms and there are no questions allowed.

From her home, Irris Makler could hear the unmistakable BOOM that meant it was time to grab her gear and head out towards the carnage.

Two Melbourne-born campaigners say there are 1.4 billion reasons we must bring the number of people living on less than USD1.25 a day to zero.

When AFL Media launched in January, it was denounced as “Pravda”, the puppet mouthpiece of the football state. So far, it’s proved them wrong — and Aussie Rules fans are hitting the site in such high numbers that ...

In the year since Andrew Bolt was found guilty of breaching racial discrimination laws, error and invective continue to warp the debate.

What happens when one of the world’s most water-deprived nations suddenly gets a huge increase in its population?

For almost a year, The Global Mail has been chasing an FOI request with the Department of Immigation. Here’s the result.

Fifty years ago this weekend an insurrection unfolded on American soil. The events of that dramatic night still resonate today.

After many complaints, the Information Commissioner today released a report into the closed-mouth chaos of the Department of Immigration.

Two of Saudi Arabia’s most outspoken civil rights activists are being tried for crimes against the state.

Regime change and democracy have brought openness to Myanmar, but it also lifts the lid on simmering religious and ethnic conflicts.

Doctors still struggle to give critically ill patients the bad news and the pros and cons of treatment options.

Following our profile on her makelovenotporn start-up, entreporneur Cindy Gallop drops into The Global Mail to make a video.

The beloved author, who grew up in Melbourne, the child of Holocaust survivors, has a new novel, ’Lola Bensky’. Here’s the novel’s first chapter.

The senator from South Australia is an ideological entrepreneur, importing the faux-grassroots campaigns first cultivated by the American right.

In a video interview, a former board member of Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art argues something is rotten at the school.

Asylum seekers who make for Australia by boat are now to be sent to Nauru. How will that work legally?

Rachel Carson’s brave, science-based book — the beginning of the environmental movement — turns 50. Have we learned anything from giant blunders in the name of progress?

Over three decades, a Brazilian movement of landless rural workers has won an area the size of Sweden to settle almost a million families.

Unfinished Seseña is the backdrop for the Spanish economic rescue being dreamed up in the European Central Bank.

I look therefore iPhone. For British artist David Hockney the view, whether vignette or sweeping, is constantly evolving.

As American symbols burn, whether embassies or fast-food joints, it's hardline religious leaders far afield fomenting the false outrage.

A frenzied election in Jakarta makes it look like democracy is flourishing in Indonesia. Or maybe it’s a dry run for the return of authoritarianism.

Hang on, isn’t that just a small hole in the most enormous net you’ve ever seen?

Tony Burke's decision to ban the F/V Abel Tasman has bought us some time to consider the issue and what lies beneath.

Driving away with a job well done viewed through a ute's rear-view mirror, tradies, and their pay, have become the envy of the job market.

Oh, no spies would ever read all the intimate details of your life as it passes through the internet — they just want to keep it nice and safe.

Australia has forever been behind the rest of the world in indigenous tertiary education. A new report suggests radical ways to fix that. It’s time.

In the Iran of the Ayatollahs, he was a Jew, a writer, a doctor performing abortions, and eventually, reluctantly, a spy.

How the 'anti-imperialist' left has twisted the public discourse on Syria and, in the process, provided intellectual cover for the Assad regime.

Reflections on Turnbull’s speech, and a by-the-numbers analysis of the top echelons of government across forty years and seven PMs.

In his Quarterly Essay, David Marr writes that the Opposition Leader has two personas: one political, another for his fiercely held values.

Discover the winner of Australia’s richest literary prize. Through words and video, historian Bill Gammage explains how Aborigines tamed the land — and how colonial paintings prove it.

Julian Assange's Australian lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, has shot to notoriety in cases where technology and freedom of speech intersect.

Robert Connolly's new film explores the dark and brilliant youth of Assange, "one of the more significant figures of the 21st century".

Ten things Can-Do Campbell Newman's government already has done, and it's still days before his first Queensland budget, coming September 11.

Julie Bishop’s calls to deport Sri Lankan asylum seekers are fighting words, unworthy of a nation devoted to humanity and the rule of law.

Australia is 50 years behind other advanced economies in laying down an amazingly sensible piece of infrastructure: the High-Speed Train.

Brazil has suspended plans to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in nuclear energy. Can it afford to ignore its enormous nuclear potential?

What happens when celebrities become our friends online? You know that’s crazy, don’t you?

The activist philosopher John Ralston Saul traces how we in the West became Walmart societies, with lots of stuff and not much substance.

A soon-to-be published biography recalls how the west’s iron-ore was won — by Lang Hancock. But what if the facts were embellished long ago?

America's mighty Mississippi has been slowed by sand-jams and dredges, and dropped to its lowest depths in decades. What's going on?

Along with much of the old world, justice is struggling to keep up with a smartphone-toting social-media here and now.

Saving the planet is not as simple as 'less meat = less heat'. Indeed, the conscientious eater might be better off with a steak than a slab of tofu.

He was a cricketer, a standout student, a pharmacist. And he left it all — for a life of poverty, purpose, and "everlasting happiness".

Storms natural and political gather as America’s Grand Old Party convenes in Florida.

Up to a million Indonesian women go abroad to work each year, promised secure work and financial stability. Does the reality match up?

The Liberal Party under John Howard and Tony Abbott has abandoned the mantle of social liberalism — and Labor should grasp it with both hands.

Apple this week became the most valuable public company in history. I had a bite of that... once.

In rural Wilcannia, seeds of hope and civic pride are being planted by an unlikely influx of new settlers.

In the laws that protect NSW forests, there's a loophole so big you could fit an open-cut coal mine through it.

An undeclared war within Islam is playing out in Syria, as popular uprisings get tangled in old religious feuds.

Big data has made your car more efficient and your roads safer — but not without opening a big hole in your privacy.

A string of tiger killings in India is prompting one state to fight poachers with guns, cash and spies. But is this compromising human rights?

The creators of a new cultural magazine are redefining Australia’s gay scene, and rejecting the ghetto.

A tiny Spanish village saved itself by turning into Smurftown. The alternative was Colonel Gaddafi.

That tail-slapping whales do? Scientists describe it as a temper tantrum. And that's only the mammals — the humans are protesting too. A story in pictures from James Price Point, where plans for a massive gas plant ...

A four-letter flare-up can cost you as much as running a red light — but is maintaining order really at risk from modern expression?

Woodside abandoned plans for a $45 billion gas hub at James Price Point on Friday, citing concerns about the project's commercial viability. The Global Mail visited the Kimberley Coast last August, when ...

A peace program gives Taliban fighters the means to leave the fight — but wives and mothers may give them the motivation.

Afghan politician and women’s rights defender Fawzia Koofi explains why she’s running for her war-torn nation’s highest office.

Despite huge efforts to deter and block boat journeys, Australian immigration policies in fact encourage asylum seekers to come by boat.

It’s only a matter of time before the Syrian war spills into Lebanon — or so people here like to say. Who benefits from keeping the Lebanese on edge?

Robert Hughes was an explorer — of language, history, art, and of what was worthy (or not) of our serious attention.

Amid the great achievements of Australian athletes in London, the medal tally is short of the forecast haul.

Is the debate over identity in Australia – who gets to call themselves indigenous – just the new face of racism?

As Team GB gathers up an historic gold-medal haul, London Mayor Boris Johnson has managed to garner almost as much glory as the athletes.

An Aussie epidemiologist, Carlton fan, and light-skinned Aboriginal man considers the strands that make up his modern indigenous identity.

Kim Dotcom relaunched his file-sharing empire with much fanfare at an event in Auckland this weekend. From last August, here's our profile of the embattled Megaupload founder.

São Paulo recently set a record — nearly 300 km of roadway blocked at once. No wonder some Paulistas choose to chopper in to work.

A bitter race debate in a US Senate campaign reflects on Australia’s own recent “White is the New Black” controversy.

Sufi music is wildly popular in Pakistan — once you get past the armed guards. Why are the Muslim mystics so maligned by militants?

Executing a spectacularly shallow dive, Australian fans have proven to be a most unsporting public this Olympics.

When people elected to serve our interests swim with the sharks, who can you turn to? It's the $100 question — with 1,000 per cent interest.