Police have told organisations planning to campaign during World Youth Day events they need to have placards, banners and T-shirts pre-approved or risk losing their protest "rights" - even those groups representing victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests. 

from Crikey ….. 

Bidding farewell to our worst foreign minister 

Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes: 

Oil climbs peak, economies plumb depressions and the future will not imitate the past

To maintain any modicum of modern life, countries and individuals will increasingly turn to electricity generated from renewable sources. There is no way to dramatically increase the world’s oil production, now or in some dreamy future. All the major fossil fuels will be in declining supply by 2025 or sooner if we ramp up use of coal or natural gas to replace crude oil. 

The country's crumbling infrastructure might require an urgent overhaul, rampant corruption might need to be stamped out, and runaway prices might demand taming, but Russia's most pressing task, some observers say, lies in a completely different area. 

Extraordinary new powers will allow police to arrest and fine people for "causing annoyance" to World Youth Day participants and permit partial strip searches at hundreds of Sydney sites, beginning today. 

Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve heads a list of Tory MPs with sizeable shareholdings in companies accused of propping up Robert Mugabe's regime, The Independent on Sunday can reveal today. 

from Crikey ….. 

NSW crime commission: the law beyond the law 

Joe Hockey is the manager of Opposition business. As such, his brief is to organise the flow of legislation with the Government, and to be the Opposition's union rep in question time.

At 42, he is hardly old, but it's fair to say that he has been an adult for some years. Which makes it all the more odd that opposition has caused Mr Hockey to regress to the age of approximately 14.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown calls for 'new deal' to solve oil crisis

The Prime Minister has unveiled a four-point plan, which would see leading oil markets – including China and India as well as the Middle East – functioning better to reduce volatility and renew efforts to make the most of the world's remaining reserves.

Nine months ago, when John Howard was still running the place, his government introduced into Parliament a piece of proposed tax law that stank of a rort. The date was September 20.

We didn't know it at the time, but when Parliament adjourned that night it wouldn't meet again before Howard called the November election that killed his government and evicted him from political life.

Obama supports supreme court reversal of gun ban

· Candidate's stance at odds with former position

· Democrat backs death penalty for child rapist

Barack Obama intensified his campaign to appeal to voters on the life-and-death issues of the American heartland yesterday by stepping away from his past support for gun control. 

The British lawyer Gareth Pierce, celebrated for her defense of miscarriage of justice victims, wrote recently: "Over the years of the conflict, every lawless action on the part of the British state provoked a similar reaction: internment, ‘shoot to kill’, the use of torture, brutally obtained false confessions and fabricated evidence.  

Meanwhile in the Deep Blue Sea - too tainted of red blood from the dead:

'What about reasoning with them?' said one whale.

'Humans do not listen to reason, they're addicted to greed!' said another.

'Pity we don't have nukular weapons!' joked a sea cow.

In a victory for corporations seeking to limit big-dollar lawsuits, the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday cut the $2.5 billion in punitive damages awarded in the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

The court reduced the award to $507.5 million, dashing the hopes of more than 32,000 fishermen and Alaska Natives who've been waiting for nearly 20 years to hear whether Exxon Mobil Corp. must pay billions in punitive damages for its part in the spill.