Wall Street's biggest banks are setting aside billions of dollars more to pay their executives and other employees just months after these firms were rescued with a taxpayer bailout, renewing questions about compensation practices in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

The recent outcry over bonuses at bailed-out firms prompted public alarm and promises of reform from financial leaders, who acknowledged that pay and bonuses should not reward risky short-term business decisions -- such as those that contributed to the meltdown -- but instead longer-term financial performance.

A Saudi Arabian princess who had an illegitimate child with a British man has secretly been granted asylum in this country after she claimed she would face the death penalty if she were forced to return home. The young woman, who has been granted anonymity by the courts, won her claim for refugee status after telling a judge that her adulterous affair made her liable to death by stoning.

From the SMH

"Well Wilson is still a member of the family and he will still be invited to Christmas dinner."

The coalition is facing an internal struggle over what stance it should take on what the government calls its carbon pollution reduction scheme.

The official coalition position is to delay a vote on government legislation until early 2010, following global climate change talks in Copenhagen and a decision by the US Congress on the Obama administration's draft laws.

The main French opposition party, the Socialists - delighted to have an issue to distract from their own internal back-stabbing - have accused the President of "scandalous collusion" with parts of the media.

The Elysée Palace, dismissing calls for a parliamentary inquiry, has rejected the cries of scandal as far-fetched. "We order opinion polls. If newspapers buy the same ones, what can we do?" said M. Sarkozy's chief aide and secretary general, Claude Guéant.

Elysée Palace denies it financed surveys which the media ran as independent

The main French opposition party, the Socialists – delighted to have an issue to distract from their own internal back-stabbing – have accused the President of "scandalous collusion" with parts of the media.

The deep divisions in the Opposition over an emissions trading scheme have been laid bare for all to see, with outspoken Liberal backbencher Wilson Tuckey labelling his leader "arrogant" and "inexperienced".

Mr Tuckey sent an email to all Opposition MPs and Senators criticising Malcolm Turnbull for suggesting the Coalition could back a scheme when the partyroom has declared it will not support any legislation before the United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen at the end of the year.

He says the Liberal Party would "prostitute" its principles if it backed Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's scheme.

From the green left

He occupied a (somewhat self-appointed) position as a hero of Australia's environment and Indigenous rights movements for decades. Yet these days, former Midnight Oil frontman and current ALP environment minister Peter Garrett works overtime to prove his credentials as a defender of big business and the big polluters.

It has been touted as a successful treatment for everything from insomnia and depression to Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis. Now supporters of legalised marijuana are making perhaps their most extravagant claim yet: that the drug can solve California's spiralling financial crisis.

A series of television ads was launched yesterday supporting a bill by Democratic assemblyman Tom Ammiano that would regulate and tax the sale of marijuana in the Golden State, where Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration is in a $26bn (£15.9bn) black hole.

CIA Director Leon Panetta has admitted that his agency regularly misled Congress, six members of the House Intelligence Committee have alleged.

The claims are echoed in a letter from the committee's Democratic chairman, Sylvestre Reyes.

The allegations follow a claim by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that the CIA misled her about interrogation methods.

A CIA spokesman has insisted that "it is not the policy or practice of the CIA to mislead Congress".

Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev announced substantial progress in crucial nuclear arms talks and on military cooperation after their much-anticipated first summit in the Kremlin on Monday.

Negotiators on both sides reached a framework agreement on replacing the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expires Dec. 5, with a deal that will cut their arsenals to the lowest level of any U.S.-Russia arms control agreement, both presidents told reporters after more than three hours of talks Monday afternoon.

Unmanned weapons are condemned by Lord Bingham as 'beyond the pale'

The use of unmanned drones as weapons of war in conflicts around the world has been called into question by one of Britain's most senior judges. Lord Bingham, until last year the senior law lord, said that some weapons were so "cruel as to be beyond the pale of human tolerance".

Comedian Al Franken has been declared the winner of Minnesota's junior seat in the Senate.

The Democratic upstart and alleged funnyman was running against Norm Coleman, the Republican incumbent. The result was so close it set off a legal squabble that will no doubt ensure new cars for untold legions of Minnesota lawyers.

The issue eventually came down to thousands of absentee ballots. In the end, justices of the state's Supreme Court ruled for Franken. He squeaked in by a razor-thin margin, 312 votes out of the nearly 2.9 million cast and is expected to be sworn in next week.

US Vice-President Joe Biden has hinted the administration will not restrain Israel if it decides on military action to remove any Iranian nuclear threat.

Mr Biden told ABC television the US could not "dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do".

Mr Biden also said President Obama's offer of dialogue with Iran remained.
Mr Obama has given Iran until the end of the year to talk about its nuclear programme, which Iran insists is for energy purposes only.

Western countries are concerned Tehran is working to acquire a nuclear weapons capability.

Saddam Hussein left open the possibility that he had weapons of mass destruction rather than appear vulnerable to neighbouring Iran, according to declassified FBI documents.

The FBI reports, released on Wednesday (local time) are based on interrogations of the former Iraqi leader.