It's blokey and it's bolshie, the envy of other unions, with near blanket coverage of its workforce. For decades it has sought to influence election campaigns, dragged concessions out of fearful governments and fought ferociously for its members.

You don't have to be sitting on a street corner urinating in your trousers and shadow boxing to be a drunk. I'm living proof of that... - Ian

For years the global warming debate has swirled like a firestorm. Science has been tossed about in a tornado of spin from doomsayers and doubters, deep green activists and fossil fuel lobbyists.

Who's tough on crime? It's an election season ritual: the law and order auction to see which party will put more cops on the streets or increase sentences or build more jails.

Across southern Australia, fire chiefs are anxiously waiting for the cool draughts of autumn to extinguish another stress-filled season of sparks, flare-ups and rushed responses.

Our world might be getting smaller, thanks to technology, but virtual worlds and games are booming. Millions of people venture daily into these new and constantly evolving landscapes where they can conquer mythical armies, slay dragons and embark on other fantastical quests.

In May 2005, citizens of Spokane, USA, woke to startling news about their city's mayor, Jim West. The outwardly conservative Republican, who had pushed legislation barring gay teachers from public schools, had whiled away his private hours trawling for young men on an Internet chatroom, the Spokesman-Review newspaper alleged. West reportedly abused his office by offering internships to lure them into more intimate relationships.

With a wispy moustache and long, lank hair, it was a different David Hicks who just faced US military court in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. No longer the clean-cut young man smiling familiarly out of old family snaps - and no longer protesting his innocence.

Australia is planting trees. After years of debate about logging old growth forests what could seem more sensible or more worthy? And yet a national quarrel has developed about tree plantations, a quarrel that Chris Master discovers is quietly dividing rural communities and members of the Coalition Government.

Picture a windswept hillside lined with slender white skyscrapers, each crowned by a giant whirring rotor longer than a jumbo jet. Or a swathe of desert covered by a sea of mirrors drawing power from the sun.

Imagine surviving a massive brain injury, then waking up in hospital to discover your personality has completely transformed.

"Well mate... let me just say this to you. I mean you wouldn't know this but I'm not a f...... good enemy to have..." (Brian Burke on the telephone)

A confronting report in which fit and healthy elderly Australians reveal plans to take their own lives before they lose their independence. Is this a new fact of life in greying Australia?

One spring day in 1964, Charles Moore and Henry Dee were hitchhiking in rural Mississippi. The two black men were picked up by the Ku Klux Klan, tortured, locked in a car boot and driven to Louisiana, then chained to an engine block and dropped alive into the Mississippi River.

Nick off, it's not for sale!... Qantas shareholder's answer to the takeover offer.

"No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." (Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Shackled, gagged and blindfolded, they are bundled on to spy planes, spirited to Third World capitals and dumped in prison hellholes. There they face repeated interrogations that typically include prolonged sessions of torture, crudely inflicted, unimaginably endured.

"We run an absolute dictatorship and that's what's going to drive this transformation and deliver results... If you can't get the people to go there and you try once and you try twice... then you just shoot 'em and get them out of the way... " - Telstra Chief Operations Officer Greg Winn (at a May business meeting)

While politicians clash noisily over global warming and how to fight it, millions of Australians are trying modestly to cut their energy use, to be a small part of a big solution.

Like Star Wars figures beamed back to the 17th century, Australia's hi-tech, lethally-equipped soldiers cut a surreal presence as they cautiously patrol the baking dustbowl of southern Afghanistan, drawing just casual glances from turbaned tribesmen and nomadic herders.

Across Britain counter terrorism forces are gathering evidence against the planners of the failed car bomb plots in London and Glasgow. The forensic information gleaned from the vehicles and the arrests in Britain and Australia should allow them to piece together how the conspiracy was formed.

"If they don't take responsibility then we will step in. We want the system to work so that when people don't take responsibility we're able to step in ... you could lose your freedom if you don't abide by the conditions." Noel Pearson.

"My baby was the last thing that I thought about until I pulled that needle out of my arm." Sharon, drug user.

It started with dinner in a Hobart restaurant. The head of Tasmania's biggest timber company and the then Deputy Premier chatted about future plans for the forest industry in Tasmania. Four years on the Tasmanian Parliament is about to decide whether to give the nod to a $1.7 billion giant pulp mill on the banks of the Tamar River north of Launceston.

An angry child, lashing out at the world, struggling at school, labelled a 'problem'. The desperate parents, looking for help, hoping that one day their child will have a normal life. This is the traumatic world of families living with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.