By Human Rights Watch
Click to expand Image A breach at a dam at a Sino-Metals Leach Zambia mine near Kitwe, Zambia, from video taken on February 19, 2025. © 2025 AP Photo/Richard Kille, file When 29-year-old Norbert Amoya went to fetch water from a river in northern Zambia earlier this year, he found large numbers of dead fish and the water had a strange smell. The cause was a major mining disaster. On February 18, a dam at a Chinese copper mine had burst and released toxic waste into a tributary of Zambia’s largest river, threatening the ecosystem, the livelihood of millions, and putting communities…
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By Mong Palatino
“Banning an entire news organization from press conferences hurts the public interest as people will lose access to independent reporting on matters of national importance.”
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By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
Defence Minister Richard Marles has confirmed Australia is monitoring a flotilla of Chinese Navy ships currently in the Philippine Sea but with its destination unknown.
Marles volunteered the information while announcing a shakeup that will establish a new Defence Delivery Agency designed to improve military acquisition and sustainment operations.
The agency will be headed by a national armaments director, who will advise the government on strategies for acquisitions and the delivery of projects after they have been approved. The government says it is the biggest reform…
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By Human Rights Watch
Click to expand Image Seventeenth session of the International Criminal Court's Assembly of States Parties in The Hague, Netherlands, December 2018. © 2018 Syd Boyd/Coalition for the International Criminal Court The International Criminal Court (ICC) is under assault by the United States and Russia, among others, which are determined to undermine its mandate as the court of last resort.ICC member countries need to stay firm in their defense of the court so that impartial justice remains a critical part of the rules-based international order.ICC member countries should use their…
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By James Ley, Deputy Books + Ideas Editor, The Conversation
Jo Case, Senior Deputy Books + Ideas Editor, The Conversation
We found out the favourite 2025 books of 35 expert readers – and the Books & Ideas team shares our own picks, too.
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By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
Those wanting to chart who’s in the prime minister’s inner sanctum need go no further than the political guests invited to his Saturday wedding.
The list of about 60 attendees for The Lodge nuptials of Albanese and Jodie Haydon included a modest but notable batch of political heavyweights (and their spouses), who form overlapping circles of the prime minister’s inner cabinet, political intimates and praetorian guard.
Perhaps not since the March 2013 marriage of Jim Chalmers, who had just moved from the office of then-treasurer Wayne Swan, and Laura Anderson, adviser to then-prime…
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By Michelle Burgis-Kasthala, Professor of International Law, La Trobe University
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has requested a pardon in his long-running corruption trial – a move that has set off alarm bells among his critics that he’s trying to circumvent the rule of law.
In a video message, Netanyahu says Israel’s current “security and political” situation makes it impossible for him to appear in court several times a week.
His request for…
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By Amnesty International
States must firmly oppose the US government’s threats and sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC) and protect the Court’s ability to pursue its independent and impartial mandate, Amnesty International said today, on the beginning of the 24th Assembly of States Parties (ASP) to the Rome Statute – the ICC’s founding treaty – which runs until 6 […] The post Global: Assembly of States Parties must oppose, not appease, US sanctions on the ICC appeared first on Amnesty International. ]]>
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By Melani Ratih Mahanani, Postdoctoral scientist, University of Heidelberg
By integrating HIV care with non-communicable disease prevention and care, healthcare systems can help people living with HIV remain healthy.
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By Fergus Edwards, Lecturer in English, University of Tasmania
One of the most critically acclaimed playwrights of our age, Tom Stoppard, has died at 88. He assumed his audience was as well read and inquisitive as he was.
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