As assassination plots go, James Purnell's move to finish off Gordon Brown must rank among the most dramatic in recent times - partly because he managed to keep it to himself, and partly because it was so direct and unequivocal.

While the Prime Minister was undoubtedly biting his fingernails to the quick in expectation that the local and Euro election results would prompt a move to oust him at some point over the next few days, he did not spot arch-Blairite Purnell creeping towards him in the undergrowth.

The Vatican appears to have an enduring vocation for Italian political and financial scandal. Secrecy and intrigue were the order of the day when American archbishop Paul Marcinkus held sway in the Bastion of Nicholas V, the medieval tower housing the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), the Vatican's central bank.

from Crikey .....

A Crikey cure for outlandish executive pay

Adam Schwab writes:

Stretching out a hand to the Islamic world, President Barack Hussein Obama on Thursday invoked the Quran, his middle name and an American evenhandedness he says too few Muslims see. Obama drew a respectful response from unlikely places - an Iranian cleric called it "an initial step for removing misconceptions."

The president, speaking at a seat of Islamic learning, delivered a 55-minute speech that was heavily promoted, carefully watched and had as its guiding themes the need to "speak the truth" and "seek a new beginning."

On April 13, the U.N. Security Council condemned North Korea's rocket launch earlier in the month.

Within nine hours, North Korea denounced and rejected the Security Council statement; expelled international inspectors and the U.S. technical team from its Yongbyon nuclear facilities; walked away from the Six-Party Talks and all previous agreements; threatened to strengthen its "self-defensive nuclear deterrent"; and said that it would restore its nuclear plant to normal operation and reprocess spent fuel rods.

For over a decade, Judid Angamarca lived in a wooden shack on stilts next to an old waste pit, where for years oil sludge from drilling was dumped.

The patch of land, the size of a tennis court, was cleaned and covered with earth in 1996. But it stubbornly refused to produce anything she tried to grow. Her three children played in the grass as babies; her animals roamed around, too. The residents living in and around San Carlos have long lived among the wells, pipes, and waste pits laid down for the oil bonanza in the Ecuadorean Amazon.

Even as China's state media on Tuesday slammed the country's massive U.S. debt purchases, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said China's leaders believe in "the basic resilience and dynamism of the U.S. economy."

Geithner said the economic and finance officials he met with during his two-day trip did not repeat concerns they have expressed publicly over the past few months about the deteriorating value of their holdings of U.S. Treasuries or the U.S. dollar position as the world's dominant reserve currency.

God doesn't need to save the Queen - she's got Barnaby

As the June 15th deadline nears for the Australian Government's decision to allow or disallow Chinalco to increase its stake in Rio Tinto, opposition to the move is playing out like a 19th century English comic opera, with Barnaby Joyce playing the "very model of a modern" toady of the Queen.

His crusade to protect Rio Tinto from the Chinese on the grounds of Australia's national interest is high farce-it is a British company, owned by Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth herself.

The history of Rio Tinto is full of ironies with regards to the flap over Chinalco's share bid:

If outlanders tend to associate Australia with kangaroos, broad-brim leather hats and an opera house, many Australians are different. They think of iron ore and bauxite, copper and coal, nickel, gold and uranium, a trove of mineral riches that is their nation's birthright and the bedrock of its prosperity.

Australia vetoed part of a $1.8 billion bid for Oz, a large zinc miner, because the military raised the prospect of Chinese espionage at an Oz mine not far from an aerospace test site.

A Travis County Constable used his Taser gun on a 72-year-old great grandmother after she refused to sign a speeding ticket.

The cop claims he was forced to defend himself because Kathryn Winkfein "got violent" in her refusal to sign the ticket.

The cop said she also used profanity, making him fear for his life.

Winkfein told an Austin news crew in the above video that the entire report was based on lies.

http://carlosmiller.com/2009/06/02/texas-deputy-uses-taser-on-72-year-old-great-grandmother/

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday officially declared it would stop calling the new strain of flu "swine flu," because no Pigs in any country have been determined to have the illness and the origination of the strain has not been determined.

Talks between Barack Obama and the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships over the past fortnight have unleashed a flood of media interest in the settlements Israel has been constructing on Palestinian territory for more than four decades.

The US president's message is unambiguous: the continuing growth of the settlements makes impossible the establishment of a Palestinian state, and therefore peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Australia's first television glass recycling plant is calling for New Zealanders' old televisions, as environmental organisations on both sides of the Tasman Sea try to stem the flow of toxic TVs to rubbish dumps.

Increasing numbers of people are dumping lead-containing cathode-ray tube televisions as they buy new flat-screen and digital televisions before the switch to digital broadcasting.

The change is due in 2013 in Australia and 2012-2015 in New Zealand.

Most discarded TV sets end up in landfill, with the toxins they contain such as lead, mercury and arsenic.

Peter Costello broke his self-imposed silence in parliament today to call Wayne Swan a moron as Treasurer extolled the today's national account figures.

The former Treasurer, now a backbencher, interjected with a blunt "Dope!"

"You're a moron," Mr Costello continued.

Kevin Rudd and Mr Swan could barely conceal their joy at today's GDP figures, which showed the economy growing and averting a recession in the technical sense.

The heated exchange, which came as the parties jostled over who had the best record as economic managers, was a throwback to another era when Mr Costello fired up regularly in question time.

In a defining moment for American capitalism, President Barack Obama ushered General Motors Corp. into bankruptcy protection Monday and put the government behind the wheel of the company that once symbolized the nation's economic muscle.

The fallen giant, the largest U.S. industrial company ever to enter bankruptcy, is shedding some 21,000 jobs and 2,600 dealers. Sparing few communities, the retrenchment amounts to one-third of its U.S. work force and 40 percent of its dealerships.