A casting agent for Sir Peter Jackson's planned film adaptations of The Hobbit has been dismissed after placing newspaper ads seeking extras with "light skin tones".

Prime Minister Julia Gillard now has no chance of avoiding a further, divisive, debate on gay marriage.

Women losing the gains of workplace equality...

A 16-year-old girl has claimed discrimination after her private Australian school banned her lesbian partner from the ball.

Women are losing some of the gains they have made towards workplace equality, the Human Rights Commission says.

Winston Churchill is rightly remembered for leading Britain through her finest hour - but what if he also led the country through her most shameful hour?

The 'Paul Henry' affair may well come up in talks between John Key and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at a summit in Hanoi.

Black people '26 times more likely' than white people to be stopped and searched by British police.

TVNZ's complaints committee has upheld the flood of complaints over Paul Henry's questioning of Sir Anand Satyanand's ethnic suitability to be Governor-General.

Jacinta Lal said controversy over the Miss IndiaNZ pageant had distracted from the "inappropriate and offensive" comments made by Paul Henry.

The first German exhibition since the Second World War to deal exclusively with Hitler and Nazism opens in Berlin.

Goff has spent much of the past week playing political football with two of New Zealand's major trading relationships.

A blonde, blue-eyed woman is in a new racism row after winning a Miss IndiaNZ beauty contest, then being accused of not looking Indian enough.

The NZ Government has congratulated controversial Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo after earlier saying it was waiting on advice.