When Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed on 7 June, US military officials first said that he was dead when they found him, which is no less than one would expect after two 500-pound bombs landed on the house he was in. Two days later, however, the same officials …

Back in the early ’90s I could find out about East Timor just by going shopping. The struggling supermarket across the road was run by an East Timorese man and his wife and teenage children. He had fought in the resistance to the invasion and remained …

Early in the new year I entered a hairdressing salon in the main street of the Victorian Wimmera town of Horsham (not “Hers and Sirs” but the one next to it, if ever you’re looking). At 9.30 in the morning the place was empty, and in no time the …