There they go again, our very own Keystone Kops. The Australian Federal Police have bungled yet another ''anti-terrorist'' investigation. The fiasco finally came crashing down around their ears in the Victorian Supreme Court on Wednesday. To cut a long story very short, three prominent members of the Australian ethnic Tamil community - all Australian citizens - had been charged with acts of terrorism in support of the Tamil Tiger rebellion in Sri Lanka.

After eight years imprisonment without charge or trial, five former Guantánamo prisoners are beginning new lives this week - two in Switzerland and three in Georgia.

Their stories reveal, yet again, how Republican lawmakers and media pundits in the US, who have, in recent months, renewed their fear-filled attacks on those still held, are guilty of hyperbolic and unprincipled outbursts and, in addition, how these critics' attacks are damaging to the prospects of cleared men, seized by mistake, finding new homes in countries that, unlike the US, are prepared to offer them a chance to rebuild their shattered lives on a humanitarian basis.

Religious leaders have used their Good Friday sermons to launch an attack on what they call a recent surge in atheism.

Thousands of Christians crowded into churches this morning to mark the solemn Christian festival of Good Friday.

Sydney Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen told his congregation atheism is not the rational philosophy that it claims to be.

Dr Jensen told the congregation that atheism is as much of a religion as Christianity.

Mr Abbott blamed the Labor Party for the focus on his persona rather than policies.

"What we are seeing is an orchestrated campaign from the Labor Party to try to play the man and not the ball," he said.

"We saw a classic case of this on the weekend, you had the prime minister tweeting best wishes to me as I was involved in a major community event while you had his ministers out there, in what was plainly an orhcestrated way, suggesting that there was something wrong with a senior politician competing in a triathlon."

The World Health Organisation is to set up an independent panel to investigate charges that it exaggerated the impact of the H1N1 swine flu pandemic and is unduly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry.

Without public debate and without congressional hearings, a segment of the Pentagon and fellow travellers have embraced a doctrine known as the Long War, which projects an "arc of instability" caused by insurgent groups from Europe to South Asia that will last between 50 and 80 years. According to one of its architects, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are just "small wars in the midst of a big one."

By JOHN M. BRODER

The newspapers are full of the latest priestly sex abuses. This is an on going story. Within the last year, mass scandals have erupted in Brazil, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria. and the United States. Figures from the John Jay School of Criminal Justice estimate that since 1950, an estimated 280,000 children have been sexually abused by Catholic Clergy and deacons.

From the ABC

Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce says comments he made yesterday poking fun at the Productivity Commission were meant to be ironic.

In his new role as Opposition spokesman for regional development, infrastructure and water, Senator Joyce has been quick to have a crack at the Government.

But already he has had to qualify his comments.

Yesterday he joked that he used Productivity Commission reports when he runs out of toilet paper.

"These people actually did read the Productivity Commission reports," he said. "I use them when I run out of toilet paper, but they actually use them."

Earlier this week, Greenpeace did the rational world a huge favor by compiling a great overview of the denial industry. "Dealing in Doubt: The Climate Denial Industry and Climate Science" is a brief but critical summary of the attacks on climate science, scientists and, most notably, the IPCC.

KEVIN RUDD is ''rattled'' by the Coalition's resurgence and ''is in fear of his political life'', Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says.

Here in the States when someone mentions "UI," most of us think of Unemployment Insurance, but not former UK prime minister, Tony Blair.

Late last week came word of a major scandal from the UK Daily Mail. In the three years since he stepped down as prime minister, Blair pocketed more than $30 million in oil revenues from his secret dealings with a South Korean oil consortium, UI Energy Corporation. Despite all his best efforts to keep his connection to UI secret, word is spreading like wildfire throughout the U.K.

Here is news of the Third World War. The United States has invaded Africa. US troops have entered Somalia, extending their war front from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and, now, the Horn of Africa. In preparation for an attack on Iran, American missiles have been placed in four Persian Gulf states, and "bunker-buster" bombs are said to be arriving at the US base on the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

The Vatican has denied the Catholic Church covered up a case of a priest accused of molesting 200 deaf boys in the US from the 1950s to the 1970s.

It has been alleged the Vatican ordered a church trial of Father Lawrence Murphy be stopped, after the priest wrote a letter to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger - now Pope Benedict.

Arthur Budzinski, 61, says he was repeatedly molested at the St John's School for the Deaf in suburban Milwaukee 40 years ago.

His daughter Gigi says it has had a huge impact on the whole family.