The Federal Government has been criticised for refusing to divert ships and aircraft to search for the bodies of dozens of asylum seekers believed to have drowned off Christmas Island.

Roughly 55 people seen on an asylum seeker boat that sank late last week are now presumed dead after a three-day air-and-sea search failed to find any survivors.

A refugee advocate has called for the Opposition Immigration Minister, Scott Morrison to end his “terrorism” witch-hunt, and for the government to instigate the leaking of information by Australian Federal Police.

More than 1,000 people marched past the main gates at Fort Meade in Maryland on June 1 in a demonstration against the impending start of a court-martial for WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning.

Martin Ferguson represents everything that is wrong with Labor today. Unlike Tony Abbott I will shed no tears for him. He is not, as Abbott claimed, an honourable opponent and great Australian.

Ferguson wasn’t Abbott’s opponent; he was Abbott’s ally.

The WTF? reaction of many Australians to the racist attacks on Adam Goodes – ape, King Kong – is but one further example of the systemic racism in our society that Harry O’Brien identified in a recent post, republished here.

In 2009 the American ambassador to Tunisia spent the evening at the home of Mohamed Sakher el-Materi, the president's son-in-law. By any standards the dinner was lavish – yogurt and ice cream were flown in from St Tropez – and the home was opulent.

US intelligence agencies are accessing the servers of nine internet giants as part of a secret data mining program, according to reports from the US and Britain this morning.

The Australian government has washed its hands of Julian Assange as prosecutors at the trial of US soldier Bradley Manning have openly targeted the WikiLeaks publisher as a conspirator engaged in espionage.

For more than two years, Rod Cameron's pessimism about Labor's prospects has been a strictly private affair. Although he dubbed Tony Abbott unelectable, the former ALP pollster remained circumspect on the challenge facing the party he served in more than 50, mostly winning, state and federal campaigns.

Once a state gets used to abusing the rights of foreigners in distant lands, it's almost inevitable it will import the habit

On Tuesday, a poll published by News Ltd showed that Labor's primary vote has fallen one point to 30 per cent and the Coalition is up three points to 49 per cent. On a two party-preferred basis, this puts the Coalition in a definitive election-winning position, 58 per cent to Labor's 42 per cent.