Pope Benedict XVI conducted a Mass with four sexual abuse victims this morning, but the father of two other victims said he was "disgusted" to have been sidelined from the meeting. 

In the BBC series The Blue Planet, David Attenborough's epic documentary on the Earth's oceans first televised seven years ago, he nails us all.  

That is when Attenborough tells us there is now more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere than at any time "in the last 650,000 years".  

Quaint Arse has confirmed it will cut 1500 jobs as it grapples with higher fuel prices that have hit the global aviation industry. 

Transport Workers Union national airline officer Scott Connolly criticised for not consulting Qantas employees before the announcement. 

With the economic news of the week of July 14 - the continuing crisis among mortgage lenders, the onset of bank failures, the announced downsizing of General Motors, the slide of the Dow-Jones below 11,000 - we are seeing the ongoing collapse of the U.S. economy. 

Even the super-rich are becoming nervous as cries for an emergency suspension of short selling ring out. 

The co-ordinator of World Youth Day, Bishop Anthony Fisher, today responded to a question about Cardinal George Pell's handling of a sexual abuse case by saying people are 'dwelling crankily ... on old wounds'.

And this afternoon Cardinal Pell did not respond to reporters' questions about Bishop Fisher's remarks. 

The Federal Opposition has accused the Government of slugging consumers with more taxes and higher costs through its proposed emissions trading scheme and will not support a 2010 start-up date. 

Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson says the cost of petrol, groceries and electricity will be pushed further up under the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, released by Climate Change Minister Penny Wong today. 

President Bush invoked executive privilege to keep Congress from seeing the FBI report of an interview with Vice President Dick Cheney and other records related to the administration's leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity in 2003. 

The president's decision drew a sharp protest Wednesday from Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of House Oversight Committee, which had subpoenaed Attorney General Michael Mukasey to turn over the documents. 

Barack Obama laid the foundations for a new US foreign policy yesterday ahead of his trips to Europe and the Middle East, promising to work with allies to tackle the threats of the 21st century with a push comparable to the Marshall plan.

In his biggest speech on the matter since entering the presidential race in 2007, he said the US had "paid the price for a foreign policy that lectures without listening".

It's the scariest book of any year in recent memory, if "scary" is understood to reach beyond mere bumps in the night and encompass the horrifying ways in which a great nation can utterly fail in upholding its own ideals.

"If there be one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American," Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1791, "it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest."  

We are here today because our bipartisan governing elite and its media apologists have turned Mr. Jefferson on his head to America’s detriment.  

There really is a kind of a tsunami of shocks facing not just the economy but people's lives, people's real lives.

They're all intersecting.  

Yes that is correct, George Bush was found guilty of war crimes. Unfortunately it was determined by the Red Cross and not the Hague, Congress or any facet of our justice system that could physically detain him.  

The co-ordinator of World Youth Day, Bishop Anthony Fisher, today responded to a question about Cardinal George Pell's handling of a sexual abuse case by saying:  

A Treasury Department plan to bolster beleaguered mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be added to a massive housing package working its way through Congress, to be to the president's desk within days, key lawmakers said today.