This year's Halloween has been the warmest on record in the UK, BBC weather has said.

A temperature of 23.6C (74.3F) was recorded in Gravesend, Kent and Kew Gardens, Greater London, surpassing the previous record of 20.0C.

This in response to an article by Victoria Rollison as a comment on Russell Brand and Helen Razer complaining Russell has no economic qualifications or such...

Petition · Show the public your British Citizenship renunciation form, proving you were not elected to our Parliament illegally ....

The new pope is a cunning thieving idiot. Actually he may be a clever man but that does not excuse his latest elevated confused ramblings delivered in order to catch more flies... No, dear Francis, we don't believe that god is a magician who created the world with a magic wand in seven days... And yes, the big bang contradicts the divine act of creation, despite your uttering to scientists, to the contrary.

To claim that the evolution theory and the dogma of creation are compatible or are both "right" is an insult to clear minded people. As an atheist, I mean it and I feel insulted. 

The dragon's flame lights up the night as it pours to the ground

while we can only run in fright as fire flays all around

Five hundred of our warriors to Paradise have gone

While we toil upon the earth till we can follow on

The Abbott Government has finally revealed what it has long denied: the Plan B to its savagely unfair Budget — raising the GST.

Remember the existential threat to our nation’s survival represented by Labor’s abject failure to rein-in the country’s spiralling, out-of-control debt?

Australia briefly became an independent state during the Whitlam years, 1972-75. An American commentator wrote that no country had "reversed its posture in international affairs so totally without going through a domestic revolution". Whitlam ended his nation's colonial servility. He abolished Royal patronage, moved Australia towards the Non-Aligned Movement, supported "zones of peace" and opposed nuclear weapons testing.

The following 30 violent exhortations are drawn from Jewish, Christian and Muslim scriptures. The generic word "God" is used for all deity names, and names of places or people have been replaced with generic terms. How well do you know your Torah, Bible or Quran and Hadith? Can you tell which is which? Give it a try and then check the key at the bottom.

A Sydney restaurant owned by Tourism Minister Andrew Robb and his family is being promoted by a government-funded $40 million, 18-month Tourism Australia campaign that targets 17 key global markets to sell the Australian "foodie" experience to the world.

The New South Wales government has been accused of running a poker machine “slush fund” after it emerged that a $20m pool of club profits was spent overwhelmingly on community projects in Coalition electorates or to pay for Liberal-National party election promises.