The co-ordinator of World Youth Day, Bishop Anthony Fisher, today responded to a question about Cardinal George Pell's handling of a sexual abuse case by saying people are 'dwelling crankily ... on old wounds'.

And this afternoon Cardinal Pell did not respond to reporters' questions about Bishop Fisher's remarks. 

The Federal Opposition has accused the Government of slugging consumers with more taxes and higher costs through its proposed emissions trading scheme and will not support a 2010 start-up date. 

Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson says the cost of petrol, groceries and electricity will be pushed further up under the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, released by Climate Change Minister Penny Wong today. 

President Bush invoked executive privilege to keep Congress from seeing the FBI report of an interview with Vice President Dick Cheney and other records related to the administration's leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity in 2003. 

The president's decision drew a sharp protest Wednesday from Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of House Oversight Committee, which had subpoenaed Attorney General Michael Mukasey to turn over the documents. 

Barack Obama laid the foundations for a new US foreign policy yesterday ahead of his trips to Europe and the Middle East, promising to work with allies to tackle the threats of the 21st century with a push comparable to the Marshall plan.

In his biggest speech on the matter since entering the presidential race in 2007, he said the US had "paid the price for a foreign policy that lectures without listening".

It's the scariest book of any year in recent memory, if "scary" is understood to reach beyond mere bumps in the night and encompass the horrifying ways in which a great nation can utterly fail in upholding its own ideals.

"If there be one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American," Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1791, "it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest."  

We are here today because our bipartisan governing elite and its media apologists have turned Mr. Jefferson on his head to America’s detriment.  

There really is a kind of a tsunami of shocks facing not just the economy but people's lives, people's real lives.

They're all intersecting.  

Yes that is correct, George Bush was found guilty of war crimes. Unfortunately it was determined by the Red Cross and not the Hague, Congress or any facet of our justice system that could physically detain him.  

The co-ordinator of World Youth Day, Bishop Anthony Fisher, today responded to a question about Cardinal George Pell's handling of a sexual abuse case by saying:  

A Treasury Department plan to bolster beleaguered mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be added to a massive housing package working its way through Congress, to be to the president's desk within days, key lawmakers said today. 

What’s so funny about Barack Obama? Apparently not very much, at least not yet. 

On Monday, The New Yorker magazine tried dipping its toe into broad satire involving Senator Obama with a cover image depicting the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and his wife, Michelle, as fist-bumping, flag-burning, bin Laden-loving terrorists in the Oval Office. The response from both Democrats and Republicans was explosive. 

The US Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) is the federal agency responsible for all US government & government sponsored, non-military, international broadcasting.  

I spent 23 years in the CIA. I drafted or was involved in many of the government's most senior assessments of the threats facing our country. I have devoted years to understanding and combating the jihadist threat. 

We rightly honor as heroes those who serve our nation and offer their lives to protect ours. We all 'support the troops.' Yet the first step for any commander is to understand the enemy.

Iran has condemned US presidential candidate John McCain for his remark that one way of killing Iranians was to export cigarettes to Iran, the official news agency IRNA reports. 

Iran Condemns McCain Over Ciggy Remarks

It sounds like a spot of gallows humour, but the numbers are no joke: the US environmental protection agency (EPA) has lowered the value of a human life by nearly $1m under George Bush's administration.