Australia's republican movement wants to use the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton to push the case for a fresh referendum on whether Australia should ditch the monarchy.

The couple officially announced their engagement last night, a month after the Prince proposed in a Kenyan game park.

The future Princess Catherine has been given Princess Diana's blue sapphire and diamond engagement ring and bookies are tipping an August 2011 wedding.

(picture by Gus Warhol)

President Karzai told The Washington Post newspaper, over the weekend that he wants a reduction in the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and that he wants the remaining troops to stay on their bases as much as possible.  General Petraeus says any drawdown will be based on security conditions and the capabilities of Afghan security forces, and that at the moment, they do not allow for a reduction.  On the pace of military operations, Petraeus frequently notes that it is only during the last few months that he has had enough forces to conduct the level of operations he believes is necessary to defeat the insurgency.

Tonight's TV debut of Sarah Palin's Alaska has been marred - or given a little extra publicity, take your pick - by criticism from a respected conservationist that the former state governor went fishing too close to protected brown bears for the sake of dramatic footage.

SEOUL, South Korea — The Group of 20 major economies took initial steps to address imbalances in the global economy on Friday. But they did not act as assertively as President Obama had hoped, and he left little doubt that he considered one country, China, the primary source of the problem.

On September 13, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age published a set of articles by Fairfax group Indonesia correspondent Tom Allard presenting detailed claims by victims of torture by members of the elite Indonesian National Police (POLRI) Anti-Terror Squad known as Densus 88 or Detachment 88.

Am I right in remembering the First Home Owner Grant comes from the federal government?

Then this is some very special political opportunism.

A picture by Roy Lichtenstein just sold for US$42 million... More dosh than the Campbell Soup Can by Andy Warhol. The one on the right is by Roy Lichtenstein that is. The one on the left was of course the inspiration. Meanwhile an old theory in regard to the CIA sponsoring the "modern" arts has resurfaced for whatever reason...

Using data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, scientists have recently discovered a gigantic, mysterious structure in our galaxy.

This feature looks like a pair of bubbles extending above & below our galaxy's centre.

Each lobe is 25,000 light-years tall & the whole structure may be only a few million years old.

Americans keep odd things up on the mantelpiece, or in the fridge: Dad's ashes in a biscuit tin or, in Barbara Bush's case, the foetus she miscarried, stored in a mason jar. As her eldest son disclosed this week on national TV, she then handed it to the teenaged George Jr, to take to the hospital. "George, honey, could you hold this while I get the car keys."

"What is it, mom?"

trilogy

They lied. They went to war under false pretenses. They killed. They destroyed a country.

They write about their right to do the things they did and blame "intelligence" that got it wrong - though they were lying about everything - and, in a well-oiled threesome speil, they say they would do it all again...

They take us for fools.

More to come.

When Julia Gillard and Hillary Clinton announced they wanted to ''make solar power competitive with conventional power sources'' within five years, they left out one important detail.

Their goal was based on solar being competitive with coal-fired power after a carbon price had been imposed.