The Iemma Government will defer the poker machine tax payments of scores of clubs in a bid to compensate for a loss of revenue since the indoor smoking ban came into force. 

The Gaming and Racing Minister, Graham West, confirmed yesterday that the Government was drawing up a policy in response to a request from Clubs NSW to allow as many as 150 clubs to defer their payments for a year or 18 months. 

For anyone at the CIA or the Pentagon who might be considering moonlighting as a spy, the report offers a warning: 'Since 1990, American spies have been poorly paid.' 

In fact, the proportion of those who received no payment at all for espionage increased from 34 percent before 1980 to 59 percent during the 1980s and to 81 percent since 1990. 

For months, beleaguered American consumers have defied expert forecasts that they would soon succumb to the pressures of falling home prices, fewer jobs and shrinking pay-checks. Now, they appear to have given in. 

Senator Barack Obama broke forcefully on Tuesday with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., in an effort to curtail a drama of race, values, patriotism and betrayal that has enveloped his presidential candidacy at a critical juncture. 

President Bush today blamed Congress for many of the nation's economic woes, charging that lawmakers have blocked his proposals for dealing with problems ranging from soaring gasoline prices to the increasing cost of food.

The mortgage industry, facing the prospect of tougher regulations for its central role in the housing crisis, has begun an intensive campaign to fight back. 

Bush pokes fun at his successors …..

Referring to Republican candidate John McCain's absence, he said: "He probably wanted to distance himself from me."  

The annual dinner dates back to 1924 and is attended by media personalities, celebrities and politicians.

As many historians have written, Europeans in the Middle Ages lived with an almost childlike emotional intensity. There were stark contrasts between daytime and darkness, between summer heat and winter cold, between misery and exuberance, and good and evil. Certain distinctions were less recognized, namely between the sacred and the profane. 

A vicar is to apply for a drinks licence so he can sell wine and beer at his small village church. 

The Reverend Geraint ap Iorwerth could be made licensee of St Peter ad Vincula Church in Pennal, near Machynlleth, close to the Powys-Gwynedd border. 

Mr Gates said that he and President Bush had settled on the four-star general for the post because he is best suited to oversee American operations, not just in Iraq but also in Afghanistan and other areas where the United States is engaged in “asymmetric” warfare, a euphemism for battling terrorists and non-uniformed combatants.

Even as American and Iraqi troops are fighting to establish control of the Sadr City section of this capital, the Iraqi government’s program to restore basic services like electricity, sewage and trash collection is lagging, jeopardizing the effort to win over the area’s wary residents.

The head of Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy, Professor David Flint, says the selection of the governance panel at the 2020 Summit was a gerrymander worthy of an African dictatorship. 

Professor Flint told a Sydney lunch celebrating the Queen's birthday that the governance panel that called for an Australian republic was stacked with pro-republican delegates. 

"President" Dick Cheney  - since our little boy Bush was being occupied by a dinner with a pope - attended the 2008 dinner for Radio and TV correspondents as a guest speaker.

Either he wrote his own gags or he had a team of army sergeants and neo-con neo-comics who wrote them for him, splurging on the bad taste like mouldy marmalade on toast.