World
The Pacific Islands Forum is the main regional body in Australia's most immediate neighbourhood, and the diplomacy around it reveals a great deal about Australian foreign policy priorities.
World
Global tourism has bounced back faster than many predicted, but it has not returned to the same shape it left, and the pressures building in popular destinations are intensifying.
World
Migrant workers send hundreds of billions of dollars home each year, making remittances one of the most important financial flows in the developing world.
World
From copper to coffee to soybeans, Latin America's vast natural wealth shapes its politics, drives its growth, and leaves it exposed to forces beyond its borders.
World
Sectarian divides, contested resources, outside powers, and unresolved borders combine to make the Middle East one of the world's most persistently unstable regions.
World
The network of farms, ships, processors, and retailers that puts food on tables worldwide is far more complex and fragile than most people realise.
World
For low-lying Pacific nations, rising seas and intensifying storms are not future scenarios but present-day threats to land, water, and sovereignty.
World
Quantum computers are genuinely different from ordinary computers, but the gap between laboratory promise and real-world impact is still large.
World
Melting sea ice is opening up the Arctic to shipping routes, resource extraction, and military competition that would have been unthinkable a generation ago.
World
Economic sanctions are one of the most common tools of foreign policy, yet their track record is more complicated than headlines suggest.
World
Some of the most consequential contests between nations are fought with culture, education, and ideas rather than weapons.
World
Modern agriculture feeds eight billion people partly because of synthetic fertilisers, and the supply chain behind them is more fragile than most people realise.
World
From Sydney to London to Toronto, housing has become unaffordable for a generation, and the forces driving that are structural, not accidental.
World
The World Bank lends billions of dollars a year to developing countries, but its role is more complicated and more contested than its name suggests.
World
Africa is on course to be home to more than a quarter of the world's population by mid-century, a shift that will reshape global economics, politics, and migration.
World
Mental health conditions affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide, yet the resources devoted to treating them remain dramatically insufficient in most countries.
World
Two industries that move the world are also among its hardest sectors to clean up, and the clock is running.
World
Governments, criminal gangs and corporations are locked in a relentless contest over digital networks, and the stakes keep rising.
World
Solar and wind power are now the cheapest sources of new electricity on earth, but the grid they plug into was built for a different era.
World
Five countries share spy secrets more freely than any other group on earth, and Australia is one of them.
World
Hydrogen is the universe's most abundant element and could be a zero-carbon fuel, but closing the gap between that promise and commercial reality has proved far harder than expected.
World
No single country makes a chip from scratch, and the decades-long process of specialisation that created that interdependence is now a source of strategic anxiety.
World
Behind every home insurance premium is a global system of risk transfer that is under growing strain as natural disasters become more frequent and severe.
World
When a country runs out of foreign currency and cannot pay its debts, the IMF is usually the lender of last resort, and its conditions shape the lives of millions.