Mar
11
2023
Mick Humphreys says one bite from a mosquito left him with permanent brain damage. Ten months after that bite he gets monster headaches, he has to use a walking stick and his short-term memory is shot. The 71-year-old retiree lives near the Murray River in far north Victoria and a mosquito infected him with the Japanese …read more
Apr
28
2018
Finally, hearts thumping, they tipped their first south-western devil out of the trap: a hefty, healthy older male, with a thick coat and excellent teeth. Best of all, his face was clear and clean — he was cancer-free.
Sep
20
2014
Scott Neeson frowns as he reads the message on his computer screen. Another child has been beaten and raped. “Oh, it’s Siem Reap again,” he says grimly, referring to the town in Cambodia’s north, near the wildly popular Angkor Wat temples. He reads on, noting that the child has been airlifted to a hospital in …read more
Jun
21
2012
On a mild autumn day earlier this year, Keith Cooper was admitted to Melbourne’s Austin hospital with pain and tenderness in his belly. Diagnosed with generalised peritonitis, possibly from gall stones, a perforated ulcer, or maybe an inflammation of the pancreas, his condition wasn’t considered critical. Certainly not serious enough for immediate medical intervention.
Oct
16
2010
Kyaw-Kyaw grimaces as he explains how he was effectively sold, like a spare bit of machinery, to a Thai trawler captain. And from then, he says, his life slid into a nightmare of beatings, amphetamines, perpetually interrupted sleep, and casual death.
Sep
11
2010
For most of the year they struggle through the Burmese jungle, carrying heavy packs of supplies, ducking the army, keeping an eye out for landmines.
Jun
4
2010
She sits in a bamboo chair in the steaming Bangkok heat, slim and elegant in a long skirt and a black sleeveless vest. Her eyebrows are delicately plucked, her ears pierced, her hair long and wavy. She turns and smiles sweetly. She has been a woman for less than a fortnight.
Mar
13
2010
A laugh rings out; one of the young women leans over, grinning, and whacks her neighbour on the arm. There are eight or 10 friends here in the Can Do bar in Thailand’s northern city of Chiang Mai, sitting in easy camaraderie around a big table in an open-air back room. Eating noodles, teasing, gossiping …read more
Mar
6
2010
It’s a long arc from the grinding misery of military oppression to the razzle-dazzle of Hollywood, but “Burma VJ – Reporting from a Closed Country” is a favourite to win an Academy Award tomorrow. And, hidden, or imprisoned or clandestinely at work, Burma’s covert video journalists will be at the glittering Awards, in spirit at …read more
Oct
17
2009
The calm Australian voice cut through the charged silence of the trial chamber; asking measured questions about one of the most depraved periods in human history: the bloodstained rule of the Khmer Rouge. The merciless ultra-communist leaders and their henchmen killed – either directly or indirectly – one fifth of Cambodia’s population in a few …read more