Today, President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act, which, despite including some important changes to the military commissions at Guantánamo, are still a far cry from restoring U.S. credibility when it comes to due process and international law. In a press release, the ACLU called on the Obama administration to "shut down for good" the commissions, "as they remain a second class system of justice that cannot shed the shameful legacy of Guantánamo and all it stands for."

Lloyds, Royal Bank of Scotland and Northern Rock will be broken up and parts of their businesses sold off to create three new banks, it emerged last night.

Government sources said ministers were "determined" to see more competition in the market, following the £1.2 trillion bailout of the sector which resulted in the loss of three independent banks and several building societies.

Yes, I am a survivor, for I have managed to survive all the scary accounts of the Holocaust: the one about the soap (1), the one about the lamp shades, the one about the camps, the mass shooting, the one about the gas (2) and the one about the death march (3). I just managed to survive them all.

One of Warren Buffett's favourite sayings about the market is: "be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy".

When the market was fearful last September, Mr Buffett was greedy, putting $5bn (£3bn) into the investment bank Goldman Sachs on exceptionally favourable terms.

He says he was only able to negotiate the deal because not many people had $5bn to hand at that particular moment.

But there is no doubt Mr Buffett's public show of confidence in the company was, in itself, a valuable asset to Goldman.

As I mentioned in "of our empty brains" in the history of invasion, not just Afghanistan, despite the devastating impact from the fighting, the result on the general populace is only a gradual shift, never an immediate change of beliefs nor direct change of allegiances, despite the new pressures, dangers, torture and deaths. Even the Romans, during the Pax Romana, had to fight against insurgencies. Insurgencies and invasions from Huns and other tribes that eventually led to the downfall of Rome, rather than its debauchery...

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"I promise that if I am elected, Iran will not acquire nuclear arms, and this implies everything necessary to carry this out," Benjamin Netanyahu said before the elections. In other speeches Netanyahu described Iran's nuclear program as "an existential threat for Israel," and warned that it risked a second Holocaust.

Benjamin Netanyahu

April, 2009

A day after an effigy of the Grim Reaper stalked his speech in Edmonton, Canada, former President George W. Bush was on the defensive over his personal salvation.

Speaking to a $400-a-seat crowd in Montreal, Bush told the roughly 1,000 attendees that his presidential decision-making was principled and moral.

"I am confident that I made decisions based on principle, that I made calls as best I could, and I did not sell my soul," Bush said.

For 470 years, since Henry VIII broke with Rome, the Church of England has been walking a careful middle line, halfway between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. This week it has effectively given up the struggle, or, more to the point, been manoeuvred into defeat by the Vatican.

DISTRICT recreational hunters have defended a bill that will give shooters entry into the state’s national parks should the controversial legislation be passed by lawmakers this week.

A Shooters Party bill before the NSW parliament would permit the hunting of native and non-native animals including kangaroos and 28 species of birds like galahs, cockatoos and swans in most of the state’s 780 national parks and reserves.

Mt Trafalgar, Kimberleys. Picture by Gus.

An environmental group says an oil spill in the Timor Sea off the West Australian coast is worse than it feared.

The World Wide Fund for Nature has completed a three day boat trip of the area and says the spill is having a significant impact on marine life.

The West Atlas oil rig operated by PTTEP Australasia has been leaking oil for nine weeks.

A team of engineers will make a fourth attempt to plug the leak today.

Tony Blair had to be rescued by bodyguards as he visited a West Bank mosque yesterday when a Palestinian man approached him shouting: 'You are a terrorist!'

The security breach occurred as the former prime minister was visiting an ancient mosque during an official trip to the city of Hebron.

The protester, a local man carrying a bag who was praying when Mr Blair and his entourage entered, was backed into a corner by guards who tried to shut him up.