Treasury officials have rejected suggestions the Federal Government's mining tax will target smaller miners and let large miners off the hook.

A parliamentary committee is examining the mineral resource rent tax (MRRT) while the Government tries to convince crossbenchers to pass the legislation through the Lower House.

Last week, Fortescue Metals chairman Andrew Forrest released research paid for by his company that shows Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton would not be liable to pay the tax for the next five years but smaller miners would have to pay tens of millions of dollars.

Is our (your) ABC getting dumber? Well this is not the real question... The question is why?

Tourists have been warned not to expect to get into Parliament House during the visit of the US President, Barack Obama, next week.

Mr Obama will arrive in Australia on November 16 and has accepted an invitation from the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, to address Parliament the following day.

But the security arrangements are so stringent the public will not be allowed into Parliament House on the day of his address, leaving people with few opportunities to see the President.

''Planning for the proposed visit is still at an early stage,'' a government source told The Sun-Herald.

The family of the 14-year-old boy on drug charges in Bali has sealed a six-figure deal with Nine Entertainment to tell the story of his arrest and trial.

Politicians don't come any more ferocious and brutal than Abbott. He reverted to the wild the moment he got his paws on the Liberal leadership.

His style is pure attack dog, as feral as you'd get.

Everything, irrespective of merit, has to be opposed and torn to pieces. The mining tax is a case in point. It is now glaringly obvious that the benefits of the mining boom should be shared around so that the overall economy benefits rather than just a small and privileged section. Opposition to the tax is shrinking.

Here we go again. Three more young soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Three more families plunged into bottomless grief.

Captain Bryce Duffy was 26. "We loved Bryce to the ends of the world and not a day will go by when he is not thought of,'' his people said in a written statement. Corporal Ashley Birt was just 22. Lance-Corporal Luke Gavin, 27, left behind a wife and three children, Joshua, 7, Holly, 5, and Olivia, just seven months. "I can't explain how we feel except that our hearts are broken,'' Mrs Gavin wrote.

From Bente Lilja Bye

Believe in global warming?

Until last week Occupy Oakland took up about as much space in the national consciousness as Occupy Tulsa.

But then, last Wednesday, the Oakland Police Department tried to end the occupation in a violent clash that lead to the injury of Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen. As a result, Occupy Oakland saw an explosion of bodies and attention unseen at any camp elsewhere in the world.

In early May this year, two Dutch men reported a murder to their local police station in the city of Tilburg.

"There is a murderer who has admitted the deed on television and who dumped the evidence at sea," one of the men apparently said.

The "murder" in question referred to the killing of Osama bin Laden by US Navy Seals. By all accounts the Dutch men's actions in going to the police were not at all tongue-in-cheek, but completely serious.

Police across the state will be told this afternoon to stop issuing fines for minor traffic offences indefinitely  following the government's announcement it plans to slash compensation for officers injured in the line of duty.

The Police Association of NSW is planning to send a directive to all 16,000 members this afternoon encouraging them to launch "go slow" industrial action.

Police officers will be told to avoid work that collects revenue for the government.

Instead of giving tickets, they will give verbal warnings.

Results of a new poll commissioned by the European Commission show that Israel is believed by Europeans in 15 countries to be the greatest threat to world peace, greater than North Korea, Iran or Afghanistan.

While the European Commission will release the full results of the poll on Monday, the International Herald Tribune reported that the 7,500 people polled living in the European Union (500 in each of the 15 E.U. member states) were presented with a list of 15 countries and asked if these countries present a threat to world peace. Shockingly, Israel was rated first.

A senior ALP faction leader branded Rupert Murdoch's News Limited "a threat to democracy" today as the feud between the newspaper group and the Government intensified.

Left faction convenor Doug Cameron's extraordinary outburst was sparked by a story in News Limited's Daily Telegraph reporting that former PM Kevin Rudd is being urged by his backers to challenge Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Senator Cameron said he would take a motion to Labor caucus seeking to widen the existing inquiry into the media to look specifically at News Limited's "absolute hatred" of Labor.

THE FALLOUT from Unesco's decision [yesterday] to admit Palestine as a full member has been swift and dramatic. Out of 173 votes cast on the issue, 107 were for Palestine's inclusion, and only 14 were actively against it.

Unesco (the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation) might seem an unimportant agency, given that its main duty is to preserve historical sites. But it was a symbolic victory for the Palestinian UN statehood bid, and it is deemed likely to have a domino effect. Here's how the world has reacted so far: