Talks between Barack Obama and the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships over the past fortnight have unleashed a flood of media interest in the settlements Israel has been constructing on Palestinian territory for more than four decades.

The US president's message is unambiguous: the continuing growth of the settlements makes impossible the establishment of a Palestinian state, and therefore peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Australia's first television glass recycling plant is calling for New Zealanders' old televisions, as environmental organisations on both sides of the Tasman Sea try to stem the flow of toxic TVs to rubbish dumps.

Increasing numbers of people are dumping lead-containing cathode-ray tube televisions as they buy new flat-screen and digital televisions before the switch to digital broadcasting.

The change is due in 2013 in Australia and 2012-2015 in New Zealand.

Most discarded TV sets end up in landfill, with the toxins they contain such as lead, mercury and arsenic.

Peter Costello broke his self-imposed silence in parliament today to call Wayne Swan a moron as Treasurer extolled the today's national account figures.

The former Treasurer, now a backbencher, interjected with a blunt "Dope!"

"You're a moron," Mr Costello continued.

Kevin Rudd and Mr Swan could barely conceal their joy at today's GDP figures, which showed the economy growing and averting a recession in the technical sense.

The heated exchange, which came as the parties jostled over who had the best record as economic managers, was a throwback to another era when Mr Costello fired up regularly in question time.

In a defining moment for American capitalism, President Barack Obama ushered General Motors Corp. into bankruptcy protection Monday and put the government behind the wheel of the company that once symbolized the nation's economic muscle.

The fallen giant, the largest U.S. industrial company ever to enter bankruptcy, is shedding some 21,000 jobs and 2,600 dealers. Sparing few communities, the retrenchment amounts to one-third of its U.S. work force and 40 percent of its dealerships.

from Wikileaks .....

The Australian Department of Health and Ageing (DHA) has set out to constrain the number of doctors graduating, despite supply shortages which have seen the country poaching medical staff from the developing world.

A FOI request executed on the DHA returned among other documents, the Howard era document C160.

A portion of that document is blacked out because the DHA claims it was contrary to public interest to reveal the information.

The DHA action serves to highlight the Deparment's political sensitivies.

Today's surprise rise in the country's growth figures has prompted a war of words in Federal Parliament over what exactly is responsible for the jump.

The increase in growth of 0.4 per cent for the March quarter means that Australia has avoided falling into a technical recession.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says the growth would not have happened without the Government's economic stimulus measures, including cash handouts and infrastructure spending.

Dick Cheney continues to insist that "enhanced interrogation" kept Americans safe and, until now, has had some success pushing this nonsense. But if you examine the timeline for Abu Zubaydah from the time he was captured until he was subjected to American-style torture you will realize that Dick Cheney is completely, utterly full of shit.

With the stroke of a pen Tuesday, Obama created the Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission, an 11-person panel that will plan and carry out activities to mark the 100th anniversary, in 2011, of the president's birth.

His widow, Nancy, watched as Obama signed the bill in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House.

The Federal Government says it will consider a request by the US President, Barack Obama, for Australia to resettle some of the detainees in the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

It is believed the request was made a week ago by the US embassy to the Prime Minister's senior adviser on foreign affairs, defence and national security, Philip Green.

It is the third request by the US  but the first by Mr Obama for Australia to help close down the prison camp set up by the Bush administration to house captives in the so-called "war on terrorism''.

Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

On 27 December, 2008, Israel launched a wide-scale military offensive against the population and infrastructure of the Gaza Strip. Operation 'Cast Lead' lasted 23 days and was the biggest Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip in nearly 42 years of occupation. 1,414 Palestinians were killed, including 313 children.1 The evidence obtained by PCHR strongly indicates that the overwhelming majority of these victims were civilians.

Here, a man called Glenn Beck is 10 seconds into his daily talkshow, and already he's reached a rolling boil. "What are the mainstream media missing?" he wonders, bounding onstage like the Duracell Bunny. "I mean, besides EVERYTHING? You are not going to BELIEVE some of the crap that's going on in the world today!"

The theft of public money by Members of Parliament, including government ministers, has given Britons a rare glimpse inside the tent of power and privilege. It is rare because not one political reporter or commentator, those who fill tombstones of column inches and dominate broadcast journalism, revealed a shred of this scandal. It was left to a public relations man to sell the "leak." Why?

French President Nicolas Sarkozy opened his nation's first military base in the Gulf Tuesday, boosting the naval presence along strategic oil routes and in pirate-infested waters off the Somali coast.

The new naval base outside the United Arab Emirates' capital, Abu Dhabi, is France's first major foreign military installation since the 1960s and its first outside Africa. It is expected help safeguard vital Persian Gulf shipping lanes. It also puts France in position to play a higher profile role in calming the growing tensions between Iran and Gulf Arab states.

from Crikey .....

By 2010, ASIO will have doubled in size

Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

It's been a fairly tame Estimates hearings so far. Only those with patience and a remarkable capacity to stay alert for hours on end will have gained anything. And I'm talking about all the participants, from senators to bureaucrats to journalists.