The agony and the ecstasy of politics is being played out in exquisite detail in NSW as we move towards the end game of Morris Iemma's bold plan to privatise the state's electricity assets. 

Political aficionados are in heaven. Macquarie Street is dominated by one question: "Will Barry back it?" 

In the weeks before Christmas last year, a brigade of battle-bruised soldiers left Colorado's Fort Carson for its third round of war in Iraq. 

Sgt. Colin Barton was getting Botox shots in his forehead to kill the relentless pain from a brain injury. Army doctors said he should not wear a helmet - a safety requirement for the flight to Iraq. The Army sent him anyway. 

National Party Senator Barnaby Joyce has called for Peter Costello to make a return to the frontbench or conclusively end speculation about his future. 

Today's Newspoll shows Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson failing to make any ground against Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, with Mr Rudd leading Dr Nelson by 65 per cent to 14 per cent in the approval ratings. 

It’s hard to know why Philip Ruddock decided to speak out in recent days about his time as Attorney General in the Howard Government.

Based on Ruddock’s own comments, it doesn’t appear he paid a lot attention to what was happening in three key agencies for which he had ultimate ministerial responsibility - the Australian Federal Police, the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.  

US Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has introduced veteran Senator Joe Biden as his running mate at a rally in Springfield, Illinois. 

Mr Obama hailed Mr Biden as a 'man with a distinguished record and a fundamental decency'.

Might it be that a raging seven-year obsession with Osama Bin Laden and his tiny Al-Qaeda organisation has blinded strategists to the old verities?  

Wars are rarely “clashes of civilisation”, but rather clashes of interest. They are usually the result of careless policy, of misread signals and of mission creep closing options for peace.  

Most Americans know Monsanto because of what it sells to put on our lawns - the ubiquitous weed killer Roundup. What they may not know is that the company now profoundly influences - and one day may virtually control - what we put on our tables. 

For most of its history Monsanto was a chemical giant, producing some of the most toxic substances ever created, residues from which have left us with some of the most polluted sites on earth.  

Can anyone seriously argue that Chinese treatment of Tibetans, who have not been subject to either genocide or ethnic cleansing and of whom the vast majority continue to live on their ancestral lands, compares unfavourably with the treatment accorded to Native Americans by the European settlers in North America or the treatment accorded (and continuing to be accorded) to the indigenous Palestinians by Zionist settlers in Palestine?

Can anyone seriously argue that it is even in the same league of evil and injustice?

President Hamid Karzai today denounced an air-strike by US-led forces that his office said killed at least 70 civilians. 

Civilian deaths and injuries are an extremely sensitive subject in Afghanistan, where the government has repeatedly pleaded with Western troops to exercise greater care to avoid hurting and killing noncombatants. Karzai broke down in tears during one such appeal. 

A recent study from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has zero credibility. It pegged likely taxpayer losses in the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailouts at $25 billion. For those with a sense of history, it is worth remembering that the S&L bailout had a $160 billion price tag.  

US Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has announced that Joe Biden will be his running mate in November's election. 

Mr Obama's choice, confirmed on his website, comes ahead of next week's Democratic Party convention. 

This current round of NATO expansion is a political reward to governments in Georgia & Ukraine that came to power as a result of US-supported revolutions, the so-called Orange Revolution & Rose Revolution.  

The credit crisis has created the most challenging economic and monetary policy environment in recent memory, the chairman of the US Federal Reserve has admitted.

Ben Bernanke presented a downbeat assessment of the economic effects of the unfolding crisis when he addressed the US central bank's annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, yesterday. 

On the steps of the bombed-out Parliament building Thursday, down the street from a neighborhood in ruins, the black-suited maestro prepared to lead a concert he aptly called a requiem, or composition for the dead.