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.

Prime Minister John Key says he will raise the possibility of Brazilian energy company Petrobras returning to New Zealand when he meets the country's President.

Christian community leaders in Lahore say the violence unleashed on the Pakistani city's Joseph colony erupted after a drinking session involving two friends, one Muslim and the other Christian.

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.

When taxi driver Ricardo is asked about Mexico's new president, he provides an amused theory on how Enrique Pena Nieto won the election last July.

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.

Russia has been accused by Western diplomats of reneging on a pledge to stop supplying arms to the Syrian regime.

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.