When George H W Bush first publicly coined the phrase New World Order, a term previously proscribed to conspiracy buffs, it came as both a declaration of unilateral power, and a brash ultimatum to anyone who didn’t like the way America does business. The sentiment was recently echoed in outgoing President Barack Obama’s final sales pitch for his embattled the TiSA, TPP and TTIP trade agreements.

London: On the face of it, NatWest's decision to unilaterally close the bank accounts of RT, aka Russia Today, is astonishing.

Things are so bad on Nauru that New Zealand has stopped foreign aid to their justice sector.

Joe Scarborough writes in The Washington Post: 

More than 100 days after the election the three Turnbull Government frontbenchers with responsibility for the Defence Department are yet to publicly confirm their precise ministerial powers — a stalemate which is causing angst among departmental officials and military companies.

Forget recession.  This country is suffering from depression, and I don’t mean the economic definition as much as the psychological one.  There is a malaise afflicting the nation.

While the mainstream media focuses on losers and winners in the race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, a largely unreported debate is going on over the future course of U.S. diplomacy. Its outcome will have a profound effect on how Washington projects power - both diplomatic and military - in the coming decade.

What does the prime minister stand for, and when will we find out about it?

Way up in the Flinders, where they store the toxic waste
there roams a fearsome canine- two headed and two-faced
as the greedy politicians who run from his mutant bark
The locals call him Bingo, The Dingo Who Glows In The Dark

That's not the wind that's howling, that's Bingo in the Ranges
sniffing out the senators storing scary stuff for strangers
Wherever you might find a place for nuclear waste to park
that's where you'll find Bingo, the Dingo Who Glows In The Dark

After weeks of their very public feud bubbling away and stealing much of the oxygen in the Senate, Attorney-General George Brandis QC and solicitor-general Justin Gleeson QC will both appear before a Senate inquiry today.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will not say if he will allow a parliamentary vote on same-sex marriage after his plan for a plebiscite was blocked by the Opposition.