"I don't care a straw for your newspaper articles, my constituents don't know how to read, but they can't help seeing them damned pictures." -- Boss Tweed

In 1868, Tweed became grand sachem (leader) of Tammany Hall and was also elected to the New York State Senate, and in 1870 he and his cronies took control of the city treasury when they passed a new city charter that named them as the board of audit. In full force now, the Tweed ring began to financially drain the city of New York through faked leases, false vouchers, extravagantly padded bills and various other schemes set up and controlled by the ring.

US President Donald Trump has imposed another round of sanctions on Russia over the poisoning of a former spy in Britain, a move Moscow says will hurt already-strained US-Russia ties.

The record-breaking heatwave that roasted Europe last month was a one-in-a-thousand-year event made up to 100 times more likely by human-driven climate change, scientists have calculated.

The Morrison government must be thanking its lucky stars for John Setka.

Who would it point to in order to stir support for the latest tranche of proposed anti-union legislation, were it not for Setka?

Although his circumstances are vastly different, Anthony Albanese is in sync with Scott Morrison in using the authority of leadership to the maximum.

I visited a friend this morning in a psychiatric hospital. It was a desolate place, worse than flattened planet Murk, where one could hardly differentiate between the doctors and the patients. The doctors had to be those allowed out at night, and those collecting a wage — while the patients were on the health system and were sleeping like babies — crying crazy in the middle of the night.

Newly appointed Minerals Council chair Helen Coonan has become the latest business heavyweight to call for nuclear power to be considered as part of Australia's future energy mix.