Extreme social and economic disadvantage faced by Maori has been highlighted as an ongoing concern by a visiting UN expert.

Today, a court in Cambodia will deliver its verdict on the man who ran Phnom Penh's Tuol Sleng jail.

British-born rapper M.I.A. is the most provocative pop artist of her generation. She talks to Miranda Sawyer about being banned by YouTube and why passion and pop are inseparable.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has thumbed his nose at prosecutors and made his first visit to a member state of the ICC.

Legalising euthanasia has won huge support from readers of nzherald.co.nz, reflecting the earlier findings of scientific public opinion polls.

Syria has forbidden the country's students and teachers from wearing the niqab - the full Islamic veil.

NZ is still only a middling performer when it comes to parental leave provisions, according to a study.

To anyone who pictures Warsaw as a cold, grey, conservative city, yesterday offered an antidote.

Tobacco giant Philip Morris has admitted that child workers have been subjected to long hours working on Kazakhstan tobacco farms it deals with.

Rower Rob Hamill hopes to meet the Khmer Rouge henchman who ran the prison where his brother Kerry was tortured and killed.

The Human Rights Commission has bowed to Catholic Church objections to a statement that NZ was a secular state and religion was only for the "private sphere".

Pete Bethune says he fully supports Sea Shepherd, despite the organisation "booting him out" during his trial in Japan.

Asian women lured to NZ with cash offers to work in the sex industry are being forced to work in slave-like conditions, a Herald investigation finds.

Good on Pete Bethune, writes Matt McCarten.

Anti-whaling activist Peter Bethune has arrived back in New Zealand, ending his five month-long nightmare.