Life is about to get even tougher for Prime Minister Julia Gillard, already burdened with enough bad news to all but guarantee her defeat in the September 14 election.

It is known throughout the Vatican as the Relatio (Narration). It is contained in two stiff, unmarked red folders and runs to around 300 pages.

Kadom al-Jabouri became the face of the fall of Baghdad but the "sledgehammer man" furiously regrets the symbolism of what he was involved in 10 years ago.

Pakistan is ripping itself apart, one minority at a time, says Irfan Yusuf.

International criminal court indictee Uhuru Kenyatta was officially declared the winner of Kenya's presidential election yesterday.

A Chilean farmer has given those on the Prime Minister's tour of Latin America an entertaining insight into farming in the country.

Prime Minister John Key begins the second leg of his Latin American tour today, stopping off in Bogota for a historic visit - the first by a New Zealand leader to Colombia.

After Prime Minister John Key lands in Mexico City this afternoon, one of his first duties will be to pay homage to Mexico's historic heroes, Los Ninos Heroes.

Phil Cleary, a former footballer and federal politician, lost his sister, Vicki, to a violent, jealous man in 1987.

As they digested yesterday's solemn pledge from Raul Castro at the annual meeting of the National Assembly to make his new five-year term as President his last.

The catchphrase "the Asian Century" was put forward by the Australian Government in a White Paper last year in which it promoted economic growth, sustainability and social prosperity.

As an enormous crowd gathered outside Rome's San Giovanni basilica on Saturday, comedian Beppe Grillo had every reason to be jubilant.

Three priests and a former priest in Scotland have reported the most senior Catholic clergyman in Britain, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, to the Vatican over allegations of inappropriate behaviour.

Joseph Stalin's son surrendered to the Germans during the Nazis' 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, new evidence found in Russian archives suggests.

Countless politicians have been caught indulging secret vices, but few can claim an addiction as eccentric as that of the former US Congressman Jesse Jackson jnr.

Currency war averted then? There seems to have been plenty of resolve among the nations of the G20.

The conversation went something like this: "We, Fran, are a continent. You are an island."

Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully will not meet a West Papuan freedom fighter who was refused a public forum at Parliament.

Australia has considered using a naval vessel to shepherd a boat of asylum seekers across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand, Prime Minister John Key revealed yesterday.

The announcement by the Government that it will take asylum seekers or refugees from Australia completely misses the boat on actually protecting refugees, writes Michael Timmins.