Former prime minister John Howard has joined an exclusive group of 24 living people to be honoured by the Queen with the Order of Merit.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Attorney-General Nicola Roxon and Foreign Minister Bob Carr all sang from the same hymn sheet this week on the continuing legal saga of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange. But they chose their words very carefully.

In the menagerie of Craig Venter’s imagination, tiny bugs will save the world. They will be custom bugs, designer bugs — bugs that only Venter can create. He will mix them up in his private laboratory from bits and pieces of DNA, and then he will release them into the air and the water, into smokestacks and oil spills, hospitals and factories and your house.

Each of the bugs will have a mission. Some will be designed to devour things, like pollution. Others will generate food and fuel. There will be bugs to fight global warming, bugs to clean up toxic waste, bugs to manufacture medicine and diagnose disease, and they will all be driven to complete these tasks by the very fibers of their synthetic DNA.

Events of the past week have solidified the suspicion that neither Gillard nor Abbott is a true leader of real stature.

The past eight days laid bare the greatest fears of the leaders of both Australia's main political parties.

Friends and teachers of the daughter of an expelled Syrian diplomat are trying to bring her back to Australia to complete her education, after she was thrown out of the country last night.

The 17-year-old has spent the past four years at Canberra schools and was just months from completing her year 12 certificate and International Baccalaureate.