In a major victory for public health and what will hopefully lead to other nations taking action, a French court decided today that GMO crops monster Monsanto is guilty of chemically poisoning a French farmer. The grain grower, Paul Francois, says he developed neurological problems such as memory loss and headaches after being exposed to Monsanto’s Lasso weedkiller back in 2004. The monumental case paves the way for legal action against Monsanto’s Roundup and other harmful herbicides and pesticides made by other manufacturers.

What is loyalty in politics? Whatever you want it to be, if you're in the Labor Party. Ministers and other MPs working to keep Julia Gillard as Prime Minister have this week launched a sustained attack on Kevin Rudd for what they say is his disloyalty.

Minister and former leader Simon Crean is making a habit of castigating Rudd in public. His mini blitz of the media on Monday morning, in which he urged Gillard to sack Rudd, was a remarkable intervention. Here is one member of the cabinet publicly denigrating a fellow cabinet member comprehensively and with purpose - repeatedly. It is the public nature of it that is so breathtaking.

The Gonski report on school funding is excellent. But better outcomes depend less on money, ideology and theory than political courage and love of learning.

Poor old David Gonski, chairman of the committee advising government on school funding, who has had the cheek to think that first principles and common sense might be a good starting point in trying to unpick what Emma Macdonald described yesterday as ''Australia's decrepit, illogical and ad hoc school funding system''.

Former federal politicians have threatened to launch court action to prevent the federal government from reining in their taxpayer-funded travel entitlements and from blocking ''windfall'' pension increases to retired MPs and senators.

The Association of Former Members of the Parliament of Australia has attacked plans to impose new limits on the number of free air and rail journeys taken by former politicians and their spouses.

Australia's education sector has become a two-tier system of advantage and disadvantage, the Gonski review into schools funding shows.

In a recent article, Barbra Streisand asked: Where is the Fourth Estate when you need them?

Church leaders, health and charity groups have joined the federal government in condemning claims that conditions for asylum seekers living in flats and houses as part of community detention are ''luxurious''.

Kevin Rudd will become the leader, not because he's made a compelling case but because Julia Gillard cannot hold the confidence of her caucus….

Qantas has signalled that the total job losses over the coming months will be significantly higher than the 500 positions it confirmed yesterday.

The latest redundancies will take the number of jobs Qantas has announced to be axed over the past four years to nearly 5000.

The defense secretary, Leon E. Panetta, recently announced that America hoped to end its combat mission in Afghanistan in 2013 as it did in Iraq last year.  Yet at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere, the United States continues to hold enemy detainees "for the duration of hostilities."  

Indeed, the "ending" of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq appears to have no consequences for the ending of detention. Because the end of a war is traditionally thought to be the moment when a president's war powers begin to ebb, bringing combat to a close in Afghanistan and Iraq should lead to a reduction in executive power - including the legitimate basis for detaining the enemy.

Hosting thousands of US marines near Darwin could see a rise in sexual assaults and drug use as well as a boost to the black economy, a Greens senator has claimed during a fiery parliamentary hearing.

The information was heard during a Senate estimates hearing, which also revealed that more than $12 million has been spent on a suite of reviews and probes into Defence culture, following last year's ''Skype'' scandal at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

That includes $7 million for the review of historical allegations of abuse within Defence being undertaken by law firm DLA Piper, and a further $500,000 for the Kirkham inquiry into Defence's handling of the Skype incident.