By Human Rights Watch
Click to expand Image The Hauts Plateaux taken from the village of Namesha in Fizi Territory, South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo, March 2026. © 2026 Emmet Livingstone (Nairobi) – Congolese armed forces and armed groups in the South Kivu highlands are interfering with aid delivery and preventing civilians from fleeing fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Human Rights Watch said today.The United Nations Security Council, which will meet on Congo on April 15, 2026, should call on all warring parties to facilitate humanitarian aid delivery and safe passage of civilians,…
(Full Story)
|
By Laura
Climate change negatively impacts human, animal, and plant species. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), this crisis is leading beehives, which are vital to food security, to run dry.
(Full Story)
|
By Sam Bennett, Disability Program Director, Grattan Institute
Reilly Polaschek, Associate, Grattan Institute
Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) has grown too big, too fast.
The NDIS is a government-funded program providing support to more than 760,000 disabled Australians. It launched in 2013 as a way to make disability support more accessible and equitable.
But public support for the NDIS is faltering.…
(Full Story)
|
By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
Liberal candidate Raissa Butkowski has drawn top position on the ballot paper for the May 9 Farrer byelection, in a field of a dozen candidates.
While she will be at the top of the ballot paper Butkowski, a lawyer with a community legal service and an Albury councillor, has a massive struggle in the contest. The byelection is to replace as member former Liberal leader Sussan Ley, who quit parliament after being ousted from the leadership.
The frontrunners are Independent Michelle Milthorpe, who has an education background and won 20% of the vote at the last election, and…
(Full Story)
|
By Human Rights Watch
Click to expand Image People pass through a destroyed section of Omdurman, Sudan on May 25, 2025. © 2025 Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images (Berlin) – Leaders meeting in Berlin on April 15, 2026, the three-year mark of ongoing conflict in Sudan, should commit to concrete, time-bound measures to protect civilians and to hold those responsible for serious international crimes to account, Human Rights Watch said today.Germany, the African Union, France, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States will meet in Berlin to address the conflict between…
(Full Story)
|
By Amnesty International
Nearly two months after the approval of the amnesty law intended to grant freedom to people prosecuted and detained for political reasons in Venezuela, Amnesty International reminds the Venezuelan authorities that its implementation must not rely on discretionary criteria that perpetuate the political repression the law is, in theory, intended to remedy. In this regard, […] The post Venezuela: Amnesty law must not become a mechanism of repression appeared first on Amnesty International. ]]>
(Full Story)
|
By Jamie Torrance, Lecturer and Researcher in Psychology, Swansea University
“Welcome bonus: get 150% up to £150 on your first deposit”. It’s the kind of offer that greets anyone who visits a British online betting site. What it doesn’t say is that if you decide to spend £50 on this offer, you’d need to stake an additional £750 of your own money before any winnings could be withdrawn.
Recent research by colleagues and I asked nearly 600 UK bettors to work out the true cost of exactly that kind of offer. Nearly everyone got…
(Full Story)
|
By Darius von Guttner Sporzynski, Professor of History, Australian Catholic University
Pope Leo XIV does not claim to direct political outcomes. He claims the right, and the duty, to judge them.
(Full Story)
|
By Warlpa Thompson, Wiimpatja Aboriginal Owner of Mutawintji National Park, Indigenous Knowledge
Jodi Rowley, Curator, Amphibian & Reptile Conservation Biology, Australian Museum, UNSW Sydney
Thomas Parkin, Research Officer, Herpetology, Australian Museum
Hidden among the red sandstone escarpments of Mutawintji National Park in western New South Wales lives a rare lizard, long isolated in this arid landscape.
Known to Wiimpatja Aboriginal Owners as kungaka – “the hidden one” – we have now scientifically described it as a new species: Liopholis mutawintji.
For decades, this little lizard was thought to be an isolated population of a widespread skink. However, through a research collaboration between Wiimpatja…
(Full Story)
|
By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
A Taylor government would make conformity with Australian values legally binding for immigrants, and make non-citizens wait longer for access to the social security system.
Outlining the first instalment of the Coalition’s long-awaited tougher approach to immigration, Opposition Leader Angus Taylor on Tuesday also said the 1700 who came to Australia from Gaza after the outbreak of the Middle East conflict presented a high risk and “must be re-assessed entirely with far greater scrutiny”.
Taylor said in a Tuesday speech to the Menzies Research Centre that was attended by…
(Full Story)
|