A former New South Wales priest claims to have witnessed a "system of cover-ups" within the Catholic Church to hide child sexual abuse.

Justin Welby, the Bishop of Durham, will become Archbishop of Canterbury when Rowan Williams steps down at the end of the year.

An Argentine court has ordered to seize US oil giant Chevron Corp's assets in the country in order to carry out an Ecuadorean court ruling that awarded $19 billion to plaintiffs in an environmental damage lawsuit in the Amazon, said a lawyer representing Ecuadoran plaintiffs on November 7, 2012 [1].

US president Barack Obama is insisting that the wealthiest Americans should pay more tax and says his re-election victory gives him a mandate to pursue that aim.

As we awake to the Murdoch media in Australia, we can see some crummy "newsworthy" relationships...

Not only we've got weird feeelings, we can smell the sulphur of media manipulating your brains...

Just a day after Obama's "historic win", the NY POST goes into a heading "GOD HATES US!..." This is as Jewish in search of the holy land as Murdoch's Post can push it... But the NY POST offers redemption in no other shape than Miranda Kerr presenting underwear for Victoria's Secret... Remember Victoria used to be a Pommy Queen from which the whole world inherited the tight arse philosophy... But here it all hangs out...

The Treasurer's office has admitted being responsible for a release of Treasury's analysis of the Coalition's tax policies.

from Antony Loewenstein ....

According to a new BBC global poll (via the Jerusalem Post):

The workforce in the electricity industry has more than doubled over the past six years although the actual amount of energy supplied to consumers has remained flat.

That's right. Zero growth in supply to the national electricity market but a workforce which has bloated from 35,000 in November 2006 to 71,900 in 2012.

When James Packer had his stomach stapled the event made national headlines. We were supposed to be impressed that, unable to master his own appetite, he paid someone else for surgical help that would change the look while leaving the core infant intact.

The indefinite detention of asylum seekers on Nauru is ''an egregious breach of international human rights law'', says the Gillard government's hand-picked human rights commissioner, Gillian Triggs.

from Crikey .....

No cameras please, we're British.

Are Prince Charles and wife Camilla playing a little hard to get?

Eric Roozendaal has revealed he submitted false information to the Roads and Traffic Authority when he was roads minister regarding the Honda CRV at the centre of a corruption probe.