While curiosity and questioning are vital, we have to be very careful to maintain healthy scepticism while researching topics we care about.

Ban #KillAllMen from Twitter!

Researchers are trying to fix the "Western bias" contained in many DNA databases with a new national project targeting multicultural communities.

Author Nathan Bell speaks about his new book One Minute to Midnight

An au pair seems too good to be true in The Intruder. Plus: Amanda Holden’s impossible new gameshow – and movie week on Strictly! Here’s what to watch this evening

Trial of Nick Gratwick, 68, who schemed to rape children as young as six, exposes previous role among green protesters A man who schemed to rape children as young as six was revealed at his trial to have been a police informer who spied on environmental activists. Nick Gratwick, 68, was found guilty on Friday of 38 “abhorrent” paedophile offences, including plans over the last two years to pay to rape or sexually assault children in the UK and abroad. Continue reading...

The ruinous result of the US approach to freedom of information and media has made anti-democratic contagion impossible to ignore * Past/Present is a new column which places current events in historical context For a generation of liberal democratic leaders shaped by the verities of the 1990s, the prospect that new media and communications technologies would deliver their citizens to fascism and war has seemed, until recently, unthinkable. Today, waves of racist violence facilitated by mass-scale misinformation have finally invited the beginnings of some response. The fate of the US, and the poisonous entente of corporate media monopoly and far-right leadership, has made the prospect of anti-democratic contagion now impossible to ignore. Measures to protect the young have taken shape with relative speed, with Australia extolling its pioneering (and unproven) initiatives on age-verification and social network restriction due to take effect on 10 December. Continue reading...

The Saturday Paper can reveal that the prime minister and other ministers from NSW intervened in cabinet to constrain the operations of the country’s leading integrity body.

An exhibition pulls back the curtain on the artist’s most famous creations, and a large cast of other characters he prepared earlier * Mr Squiggle and Friends: The Creative World of Norman Hetherington runs until 13 October at the National Museum in Canberra * Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email Continue reading...

Putin told Azerbaijan's Aliyev that Russia will provide 'compensation' for the deadly crash caused by its air defences.

Names, email addresses and other contact details of about 70,000 global users could also have been taken Government ID photos of about 70,000 global users of Discord, a popular messaging and chat platform among video gamers, may have been exposed after hackers compromised a company contracted to carry out age verification checks. Some users’ names, email addresses and other contact details, IP addresses and messages with Discord’s customer service agents may also have been taken. The attacker has been trying to extort a ransom from the company. No full credit card details or passwords were seized. Continue reading...

Husamettin Dogan has sentence increased to 10 years after being found guilty of raping Pelicot while she was sedated A man has been found guilty on appeal of raping Gisèle Pelicot after she was drugged unconscious by her husband – and has been given an increased prison sentence of 10 years. Husamettin Dogan, 44, an unemployed builder, who had contested his first conviction last year, faced a retrial this week at Nîmes court of appeal. Continue reading...

As anti-immigration sentiment is politicised around the world, new arrivals to Australia are being portrayed as detrimental to the economy – when in fact the opposite is true.