US President Barack Obama's administration has rejected Republican calls to fire the ambassador to Belgium after he suggested that Israeli actions against Palestinians, including settlement building and military strikes, were partly to blame for anti-Semitism in Europe.

Ambassador Howard Gutman, who is Jewish and the son of a Holocaust survivor, said in a speech that a new type of anti-Semitism had emerged in Europe that was not "classic bigotry" but instead linked to "continuing tensions" between Israel and the Palestinian territories and other Arab neighbours.

Ideas erupt from the mind of Newt Gingrich — bold, unconventional and sometimes troubling and distracting.

On Monday, Mr. Gingrich sought to do damage control on the latest of his Big Thoughts to land him in hot water — helping children bootstrap their way out of poverty by paying them to mop and clean their schools, and rolling back child labor laws that he has called “truly stupid.”

Former Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull has urged his successor Tony Abbott to support a conscience vote on the issue of same-sex marriage.

The ALP national conference at the weekend changed its platform to one of support for gay marriage, voting for Labor MPs to be allowed a conscience vote on the issue.

Opinion polls reveal the community is in support of same-sex marriage with a Galaxy Research poll released yesterday showing 76 per of Coalition voters back a conscience vote.

Mr Abbott continues to insist the Coalition strongly opposes any change to the Marriage Act, but he has not vetoed a conscience vote.

"If Australia is going to lift the ban on a country which has not signed a non-Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, it is hoped it is also applied to Pakistan the same way."

Currently Pakistan has not made any request for uranium from  Australia yet, but Abdullah said this may change in the future.

Even by today's standards, godless, childless 'Ju-liar' cops more than her fair share.

MANY Australians believe politics to be an ideological cesspool. It's little wonder: Labor hasn't represented working people since Bob Hawke held office, and the Liberal Party hasn't espoused liberal values since Malcolm Fraser. Both major parties effectively ceased to exist decades ago.

From Jonathan Holmes

"But to my mind, that interview doesn’t justify the programs.

However much Australian Story may deny it, the fact is it did question the jury’s verdict reached after a seven week trial. As I’ve said before, only compelling new evidence justifies a TV program doing that – and in my view, we didn’t get it."

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Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan...

From the dawn of the colonial era, long before they even had a national identity, Americans have always felt they had a special role in the world, though the exact nature of American exceptionalism has always been a matter of some dispute.

Many have taken it to be a special religious destiny, but Alexis de Tocqueville, the first to consider it systematically, affirmed the exact opposite: "a thousand special causes ... have singularly concurred to fix the mind of the American upon purely practical objects." Ironically enough, the exact term "American exceptionalism" was first used by Joseph Stalin, in order to reject it.

The BBC has been forced to apologise after television presenter Jeremy Clarkson said British public sector workers taking part in a 24-hour walkout should be shot in front of their families.

The national broadcaster issued an on-air apology, saying Clarkson's comments in an interview on the BBC One live talk show, The One Show, were a misjudged attempt at comedy.

When asked what he thought of the strikers, Clarkson said: "I would have them all shot".

"I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families," added the presenter, best known as the face of the BBC's top-rated Top Gear car show.

James Murdoch has been re-elected as the chairman of British broadcaster BSkyB, but critics who wanted him to resign over the phone hacking scandal that has rocked Britain say his position is weakened.

BSkyB said Murdoch won the support of more than 81 per cent of shareholders who voted on Tuesday, while nearly 19 per cent voted against him at the company's annual meeting.

News Corporation, the media conglomerate controlled by Murdoch's father Rupert Murdoch, owns 39 per cent of the company.

ALASTAIR CAMPBELL has told the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics that the British press has become "frankly putrid in many of its elements". He believes the whole newspaper industry has moved downmarket, aping celebrity magazines in an attempt to increase circulation.

Campbell, a former Daily Mirror journalist who became Tony Blair's spin doctor, believes investigative journalism is "dying". He said budget cuts mean journalists are now largely desk-bound and rely on private investigators to get stories.

The Opposition says it is considering not putting out an alternative budget update, after Treasurer Wayne Swan announced $11.5 billion in savings to get the budget back to surplus in 2012-13.

Opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey says the Government steals its policies and the Coalition is tired of doing the "heavy lifting".

He says the Government's decision to make cuts to the public service to help make savings is stolen from the Opposition's policy play book.

'Well it's no surprise and we welcome the Government copying us. I wish they'd copy us on everything and then maybe the country would be in better shape," he said.

Someone in the Labor Party remarked yesterday that the former prime minister Kevin Rudd assumes that everyone has the memory of a goldfish".

The MP, like many others, was a touch staggered at Rudd's call over the weekend for the ALP to embrace greater internal democracy or perish.

He has been railing against factional thuggery and calling for the empowerment of the great unwashed on and off since he was deposed in June last year.

But with the three-day ALP national conference beginning on Friday, and the party reforms recommended in the post-election review conducted by John Faulkner, Bob Carr and Steve Bracks to be hotly debated, Rudd has joined in.