Melbourne delivers a perfect storm .....

As Tiger Woods returns to golf, not all his affairs are salacious headlines. The Tiger Woods Golf Course in Dubai is costing $100million to build. Dubai relies on cheap third world labour, as do certain consumer brands that have helped make Woods a billionaire. Nike workers in Thailand wrote to Woods, expressing their "utmost respect for your skill and perseverance as an athlete" but pointing out that they would need to work 72,000 years "to receive what you will earn from [your Nike] contract".

In what could be seen as an effort to respond to the March 11, 2009 edition of the U.S. Department of State's Country Reports on Human Rights, Ecuador has promised to publish its own human rights counter-report. This initiative is meant to assess Washington's own respect for human rights from an outside perspective and is meant to be a necessary response to the State Department's often imprudent document. Also, the very next day, March 12, China published "Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009."

In the fall of 2001, a nation reeling from the horror of 9/11 was rocked by a series of deadly anthrax attacks. As the pressure to find a culprit mounted, the FBI, abetted by the media, found one. The wrong one. This is the story of how federal authorities blew the biggest anti-terror investigation of the past decade - and nearly destroyed an innocent man. Here, for the first time, the falsely accused, Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, speaks out about his ordeal.

The Wrong Man

Imagine for one moment the corridors of power and influence, from presidential palaces to military command centres, being populated by the likes of Ku Klux Klan, white supremacists etc, who utter such racist nonsense that one race had been responsible for most of humanity's great achievements, that they are more apt at ruling the world's affairs!

Goldman Sachs will incur further damage to its reputation today when it releases details of a $5 billion bonus package for staff for the first three months of the year. Fabrice 'Fabulous Fab' Tourre, the now-suspended London-based banker targeted by US authorities for his role in an alleged $1 billion mortage-hawking scandal, can expect to receive a substantial slice of the cake.

ABOUT 20,000 Australians, whose travel plans have been thrown into chaos by the Iceland volcanic eruption, face confusion over their travel insurance.

The director of the multi-insurer travel insurance website Travel Insurance Australia, Walter De Angeli, said the big insurance providers such as QBE and Alliance were offering to cover all reasonable expenses such as accommodation, meals and cancellation fees incurred after European flights bans last week.

By DONALD KENNEDY

Stanford, Calif.

NOW that Congress has pushed through its complicated legislation to reform the health insurance system, it could take one more simple step to protect the health of all Americans. This one wouldn’t raise any taxes or make any further changes to our health insurance system, so it could be quickly passed by Congress with an outpouring of bipartisan support. Or could it?

Gay rights activists have criticised a Vatican official who sought to link homosexuality to paedophilia when commenting on child sex abuse scandals.

The UK's Stonewall group said it was astonishing gay people should still be dealing with "such an offensive myth".

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone had said homosexuality, not celibacy, lay behind the child sex abuse scandals.

The cardinal, the Vatican's foreign minister, was speaking in Chile, where his comments were also condemned.

Neither the judges, Leach nor the gallery are troubled by the similarity.

''There are some key differences there,'' Leach, 37, said. ''Quite clearly I'm quoting that original work … I'm not sort of ashamed or worried about it.''

As for the Wynne's rule that the landscape be Australian, that wasn't a problem, either.

Leach, who also took out this year's Archibald Prize, pocketing $75,000 for the two wins, said his Wynne painting was ''a projection into some kind of idealised future'' and that people saw landscapes ''through a certain kind of constructed idea of what a landscape should be''.

In fact Reuters was shown the Apache video by the US military shortly after the killings, but raised no stink. Requests for public release under the Freedom of Information Act were denied. Finally whistleblowers handed the video to Wikileaks.

A former High Court justice would swap 10 judges for one honest homosexual like singer Ricky Martin, a conference in Brisbane has been told.

Michael Kirby, former Justice of the High Court of Australia, opened and closed his keynote address at the second International Queer Studies Conference on Thursday by playing Martin's song Livin' La Vida Loca.

Justice Kirby, who revealed he was gay while serving on the High Court, praised the singer for coming out about his homosexuality.