Taiwan is one of the world’s key economies, yet it belongs to no international organisations and isn’t a member of the UN. Why is Taiwan diplomatically isolated and how does it survive economically?

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Taiwan—isolated but not alone

While working from home during the pandemic has been a novel and sometimes difficult experience for office workers, companies and their employees have been experimenting with teleworking for decades.

Out of the office—from telecommuting to working from home

While cybercrime and cybersurveillance are commonplace today, how many of us understand their effect our everyday lives? What’s revealed in the history of cybercrime, from its rudimentary beginnings in the 1980s to today?

Cybercrime

Many Germans have only ever known one chancellor – Angela Merkel. Voters are about to choose a new leader for the first time in sixteen years and the election is being described as the most open and uncertain Germany has ever had.

Germany after Merkel

The spread of the delta variant of Covid from the cities to rural and regional Australia has exposed weaknesses in the health system. Rear Vision traces the story of rural health care from bush medicine through to the pandemic.

Rural health care—from bush medicine to the pandemic

Almost three thousand people died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States. All planes were grounded and rumours and conspiracy theories swept the internet as a shocked nation tried to make sense of what happened.

The September 11 attacks—rumours, conspiracy theories and the day that changed aviation forever

The federal government believes the way to lower Australia’s carbon emissions is through technology and one of the technologies it is backing is carbon capture and storage or CCS. What is CCS, how and why was it developed and, most importantly, does it work?

Carbon capture and storage—an expensive distraction or the answer to global warming?

Barnaby Joyce’s return to the leadership of the National Party is bound to stir things up in Australian politics. Where does he fit in the story of one of Australia’s oldest and most unusual political parties?

Politics in the bush—the story of the Nats

Afghanistan has been invaded by foreign armies five times in less than 200 years. Every occupation ultimately failed. What can we learn from this history?

Afghanistan—the land of failed invasion

The Taliban emerged from the rubble of the Soviet-Afghan war and in turn were ousted by the US War on Terror. With the Americans and their allies gone, the Taliban threaten to take over Afghanistan again. Who are the Taliban and what would their return to power mean?

Who are the Taliban?

In the early 1990s, Nelson Mandela and his political party, the ANC, ended apartheid peacefully but the leaders of the new democracy did not address the economic inequality of the apartheid era. Today it is tearing the nation apart.

Violence and inequality—how the end of apartheid failed black South Africa

The Tokyo Olympics have gone ahead despite the global pandemic, but it’s the not the first-time world events have conspired against the games. 40 years ago, the Olympics ran head long into the Cold War, and sport became collateral damage in a standoff between the USSR and the United States. This is the story of how Australia and its athletes were caught up in the crisis, and a how the impact of that time is still being felt today.

The Cold War Games

The Caribbean nation of Haiti, whose president was recently assassinated, is the world’s poorest and most unstable country. Yet this was not always the case. For over a century it was France’s richest colony and later became the first black-led republic. Why has Haiti become such a mess?

Haiti—the background to an assassination

Haiti — the background to an assassination

Bolsonaro's right-wing politics, boorish comments and mishandling of the Covid pandemic have invited comparisons with Donald Trump, but Brazil’s president came from a poor family and spent almost thirty undistinguished years in parliament before he won the top job.

The Trump of the Tropics—Jair Bolsonaro

We tease out the complex history behind those baffling events in the news.

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