Mining barons Clive Palmer and Andrew Forrest have taken on the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, the first labelling him an "intellectual pygmy" who does not understand economics and the second launching a national advertising campaign against him.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has declared he is confident Australians will send him to The Lodge, suggesting to a Liberal Party audience he is a sure bet to be prime minister.

The global gender gap defies simple solutions. Eighty-five per cent of countries have improved conditions for women over the past six years, according to the World Economic Forum, but in economic and political terms there is still a long way to go.

"From London to Lahore," says Oxfam, "inequality between men and women persists." Here The Independent on Sunday explores the best places to be a woman today.

Yesterday I received an email from Stratfor CEO and founder George Friedman. "Deplorable, unfortunate and illegal," he thundered.

Having had our property stolen, we will not be victimised twice by submitting to questions about them.

Bob Carr's love of US Civil War history doesn't make him qualified to be Australia's next foreign minister, a senior federal opposition frontbencher says.

And everybody praised the Duke
Who this great fight did win. 
"But what good came of it at last?"
Quoth little Peterkin.
"Why, that I cannot tell," said he;
"But 'twas a famous victory."

Share markets in the United States and Europe have dipped after US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke all but ruled out more economic stimulus.

Football Federation Australia (FFA) has terminated Gold Coast United's A-League licence held by Clive Palmer.

Labor may just be able to get on with governing before it's too late.

Scotland Yard helped the former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks to go out hacking, it was revealed yesterday – but the arrangement owed nothing to the interception of mobile phone messages.

New archaeological evidence suggests that America was first discovered by Stone Age people from Europe – 10,000 years before the Siberian-originating ancestors of the American Indians set foot in the New World.

picture by Gus Leonisky.... Hopefully this is in the vicinity of Arkaroola... For more than 40 years I've taken pictures in Australia, some pictures got stolen, some have lost their identification... so I go by my memory which is flinching like a candle in the wind of forgetfullness...