Al Qaeda head Ayman al-Zawahiri threw his support behind rebels in Syria as the country's Arab neighbours cut it adrift and vowed to support the uprising against president Bashar al-Assad.

Arab League ministers meeting in Cairo called for a joint Arab and United Nations peacekeeping mission in the troubled country and vowed political and material support for the rebels.

The call came as regime troops continued their deadly assault on areas of the flashpoint city of Homs.

Speaking in a video message, al-Zawahiri described the Assad government as a "cancerous regime" that was suffocating the people of Syria.

Interpol has been accused of abusing its powers after Saudi Arabia allegedly used the organisation's red notice system to get a journalist arrested in Malaysia for insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

Police in Kuala Lumpur said Hamza Kashgari, 23, was detained at the airport "following a request made to us by Interpol" the international police cooperation agency, on behalf of the Saudi authorities.

An expert science review panel recommended CSIRO boost support for oceanographer Trevor McDougall's globally significant climate research, just months before Australia's peak science agency dumped the award-winning scientist, documents reveal.

Two internal reports, obtained by The Canberra Times, show CSIRO also rejected the panel's recommendation the agency appoint a science advisory committee to clear up confusion over ''science vision at a higher level'' among executives responsible for running its marine and atmospheric research division.

Occasionally I spend a day wandering from trial to trial in the Downing Centre, Sydney's giant justice factory. It's one way of keeping in touch with certain aspects of the city. A while ago I began to notice small dark men in the dock, always with an interpreter.

These are the crew from the Indonesian boats that carry asylum seekers to our shores, charged with people smuggling and farmed out by the Commonwealth to the states for justice. There are lots of them: as of last September, almost 200 had been convicted and another 251 were due before the courts.

picture by Gus Leonisky

A report has recommended the immediate privatisation of sections of the New South Wales rail network, to improve services and drive down costs.

Lobby group Infrastructure Partnerships Australia (IPA) commissioned the report, and is now pushing the State Government to act on its findings.

Earlier this month Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian announced the Government's own review to improve the efficiency of RailCorp, saying the organisation costs about $10 million a day.

When dozens of private hospital staff gathered outside Rob Oakeshott's Port Macquarie electorate office on Saturday to urge him to reject means testing of health insurance, they risked provoking the wrong response.

He was tipped off on Friday about the protest and heard it was being pushed by the health insurance billionaire Paul Ramsay.

Oakeshott has had a gutful of big money trying to influence politics and, if anything, Saturday hardened his resolve.

A set-up by a foreign intelligence agency and a cover-up by senior federal government officials led to the conviction and jailing of six Australians in Sydney for terrorism, a Herald investigation reveals.

The BBC will today apologise to an estimated 74 million people around the world for a news fixing scandal, exposed by The Independent, in which it broadcast documentaries made by a London TV company that was earning millions of pounds from PR clients which it featured in its programming.

Peter Slipper, the Liberal Party defector, has opted to wear a robe for his role as Speaker. No matter how much pomp and ceremony he surrounds himself with, however, it will not automatically produce respect from his fellow parliamentarians.

The US Marine Corps is once again in damage control after a photograph surfaced of a sniper team in Afghanistan posing in front of a flag with a logo resembling that of the notorious Nazi SS - a special unit that murdered millions of Jews, gypsies and others.

The Corps said in a statement that using the symbol was not acceptable, but the marines in the photograph taken in September 2010 would not be disciplined because investigators determined it was a naive mistake.

Labor's leadership issue must be resolved - but no one knows when or how.

Kevin Rudd was active on the Syrian crisis this week, reporting to Parliament and calling in that country's senior diplomat. But there was no press conference; nor did the Foreign Minister hit the airwaves.

Tony Abbott has the experience in government to be Prime Minister - the rest of his team might struggle to pass the same test

The Leader of the Opposition has passionate critics and defenders. While I accept some of their insights, neither group convinces me.

The passionate critics, including Susan Mitchell in her book, Tony Abbott: A Man's Man, describe him as a danger to women and to democracy, especially secular democracy.

The passionate defenders, including several senior media commentators, dismiss any criticism of his social policies as anti-Catholic sectarianism.

Former clerk of the Senate Harry Evans says Mr Slipper should just get on with the job"You can't recreate a tradition once it's dead, and I think it was well and truly dead in Australia and has been well and truly dead for a number of years," he said.