60 Minutes: Aug 19

On 60 Minutes, stories of stem-cell treatment, farmers doing it tough and more.

The Big Step
Six-year-old Isabella Lombardo is a real chatterbox. Smart and beautiful, she lights up any room. But she has lived her short life debilitated by cerebral palsy. It’s a tough disorder, and when it was diagnosed her mum and dad vowed to do anything and everything they could to help their precious daughter. For four years Libby and Joseph Lombardo searched the world and spent all their savings, but eventually found a radical new stem-cell treatment in Mexico. The prize it offered was the hope Isabella might walk for the first time. Then they faced the most difficult decision of all: should they put their faith – and their daughter’s life – in the hands of unknown doctors and untested science?
Reporter: Liam Bartlett
Producer: Stefanie Sgroi

ISIS Bride, Aussie Baby
It would be easy to give Islam Mitat the coldest of shoulders, to ignore her despair and say we couldn’t care less about her. After all she was an ISIS bride, married to a British jihadi, and living at the front line of the war in Syria. And when, not surprisingly, her husband was killed in battle, she married an Australian ISIS fighter and had his baby. He too paid the ultimate price for his beliefs, leaving Islam with no choice but to make a daring and dangerous escape. Now, in an exclusive 60 Minutes interview conducted in a secret North African location, she tells Tara Brown she was tricked into going to Syria in the first place. It’s a revelation that raises serious questions. Should we believe her? And what should become of this ISIS bride and her Aussie baby?
Reporter: Tara Brown
Producers: Eliza Berkery, Ali Smith

The Long Paddock
Unless you’ve had your head stuck in the non-existent clouds, you’d know large tracts of eastern Australia are in the iron grip of the nastiest drought in 50 years. The experts say if there isn’t rain soon it will become the worst drought since records were first kept. But while there has been a flood of stories about desperation and despair, Charles Wooley reckons it’s just as important to highlight the incredible resilience of the people on the land, despite these hardest of times. Way out beyond Tamworth in country New South Wales he met the wonderful Hourigan family, drovers who are moving 900head of cattle along what is known as “the long paddock”.
Reporter: Charles Wooley
Producer: Nick Greenaway

8:30pm Sunday on Nine.