News stories by Neena Bhandari, page 5

From the Australian bush to Alaska’s Arctic wilderness, indigenous peoples’ stories and perspectives take centre stage at the Message Sticks Film Festival, the only annual event of its kind in Australia.

Some Australians are convinced their government is sharing intelligence information with foreign powers about citizens implicated by documents released by Wikileaks.

Australia’s foreign aid budget is likely to double by 2015, but civil society groups say this is far from enough if it is to keep to its 'fair share' of commitments to poorer countries.

Devina Celeste, 50, waits in a queue of about 40 people at the neighbourhood centre in the Australian inner-city suburb of Newtown for the only hot meal she will get on this cold winter night.

While successful immunisation programmes worldwide have saved millions of lives, the threat of new infectious diseases and drug-resistant strains of existing diseases is posing a major challenge to governments, especially in developing regions like Asia, in meeting their commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Deep rift continues between pro and anti-whaling members of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) as Australia Tuesday lodged legal action in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Japanese ‘scientific’ whaling, calling for a permanent end to all whaling in the Southern Ocean, an established whale sanctuary and a critical feeding ground for the mighty mammals.

Australia may be the land of the ‘fair go’, yet not all seems fair where equal representation of men and women is concerned.

In a world beset with conflict, natural disasters and economic crisis, the 2010 Sydney Festival has been a celebration of human connectedness, bringing together 1,500 artists from 30 countries, performing to an audience of a million over a period of three weeks, beginning on Jan. 9.

For the global religious community, the use of nuclear arms is an overwhelmingly important ethical issue for the human family. Thus, nothing less than the immediate abolition of such weapons is needed from the highest levels, said speakers at the Parliament of the World’s Religions currently underway in this Australian city.

As the world focuses on the impact of climate change, little attention is being paid to yet another environmental bane: increasing contamination of air, water and soil.