A police officer in Missouri was suspended after he voiced his contempt via Facebook for protesters condemning the fatal shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer.

The evolutionary biologist and philosopher Richard Dawkins created a Twitterstorm this week when he posted about a young woman in Ireland who was forced to give birth to a baby conceived through rape.

When Dame Susan Devoy was appointed Race Relations Commissioner last year, the intelligentsia sniffed at the choice of a squash champion.

Exhausted but overjoyed Meriam Ibrahim had an emotional reunion with family and friends in Manchester, New Hampshire.

A uniformed Corrections employee says he was unlawfully detained for 45 minutes at an Avondale service station when staff refused to believe he had pre-paid for $30 of petrol.

After Hamilton woman Rikki Cooper made her brave decision to go public and highlight racial profiling at her local Countdown supermarket.

I have reluctantly concluded that NZ does suffer a rape culture. Men can commit sex crimes and get away with it, writes Rodney Hide.

A US teenager has accused Instagram of size discrimination after it suspended her account because a relatively chaste series of underwear selfies “violated community guidelines”.

A woman who was ordered to leave an Auckland swimming pool complex at the weekend says she will complain to the Race Relations Commissioner.

A woman undergoing chemotherapy says she felt humiliated after being turned away from a Hamilton casino because she didn't have a doctor's note saying she needed to wear a hat.

The European Court of Human Rights has upheld France's ban on wearing a burqa or a niqab in public.

As actor Gary Oldman discovered to his chagrin this week, political correctness has a way of transforming verbal hand grenades into verbal boomerangs, writes Paul Thomas.

Amid bad news from Iraq, we must remember most of Islam's faithful are ordinary people living ordinary lives.

New Zealand women are earning thousands of dollars less than their male counterparts just five years after graduation, a report reveals.

During an Italian national team training camp in Coverciano last month, Mario Balotelli was forced to endure the sickening experience of having racist bile spat at him.

A prominent Saudi cleric has sparked outrage by saying that online conversations between men and women are religiously forbidden.

NBA basketball owner Donald Sterling's viciously racist comments in the US remind again how lucky we are in NZ to have a comparatively settled racial landscape, writes Paul Lewis.

The other morning I was grabbing a coffee before work and read Bob McCroskie's opinion piece, and that was the start of a ruined day, writes Tom Hamilton.

Women earn less than men because they are seen as pushovers when they don't negotiate hard and are seen as "ball-breakers" when they do, a psychologist says.

After 2,000 years of persecution, India's two million eunuchs are to be formally recognised as a third sex and listed as a "backward" caste entitled to reserved government jobs and university places.

New Zealand has a long and ignominious history of suspicion and hostility towards people of Asian descent.

Transgender model Amy Brosnahan has found hope in a pub beauty pageant - and she's not alone in being embraced by a more tolerant New Zealand.

The 21-year-old, born in England and now living in Wellington, said she once attended a support group for children of same-sex parents after moving to New Zealand. Her family was the only one there.

A transgender Auckland teen rewrote pageant history early this morning after earning a place in next month's final of the Battle of the Babes.

New Zealand's male-dominated business culture with its old-boy sports and education network is sabotaging the promotion of women, says exiting Summerset Group boss Norah Barlow.

An aspiring transgender model has vowed to take to the catwalk tomorrow night despite a row over whether she was eligible to enter a beauty contest.

The woman in charge of equal employment opportunities is set to "crack the whip" on government departments for failing to close the gender pay gap.

It's all part of Tony Abbott's vision of a new Liberal dawn. The Oz PM's conservative Government intends to dilute racial vilification laws to enshrine the right of Australians to be bigots.