The Vatican is facing a deepening controversy over the burial 22 years ago of a notorious crime boss, with reports emerging that the church accepted a one billion lire (£407,000) payment from the mobster's widow to allow his interment in a basilica.

If you believe the polls, the opposition and some of the media commentary over the past 24 hours, Julia Gillard's government is not just hanging by a thread on the rocks. It's a disaster of historic proportions. In all of this is the underlying question of the Prime Minister's judgement.

But as government ministers are at pains to keep pointing out, the Gillard government is not planning to go anywhere anytime soon. Ms Gillard is a "gutsy" leader with the numbers in the caucus. Indeed, as Trade Minister Craig Emerson said in the wake of the Slipper/Thomson dual sidelining, "life goes on."

from Crikey .....

The Prime Minister reverses her position on Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper because "a line has been crossed", and gets angry at journalists when they ask why. We half expected a Nixonian line about former statements being "inoperative".

Tony Abbott gives a media conference at which he demands the government "disown" the vote of Craig Thomson. Of the assembled journalists, none bother asking him about his double standard, given he has readily accepted the votes of Coalition figures charged with civil and criminal wrongdoing.

Sadly, there is more information floating about the "hoax" of global warming than there is about real sciences... 

Last Thursday, before flying from Istanbul to Ankara, and then home, Julia Gillard held the final press conference of her trip abroad. Given all that was happening at home, there was plenty to ask the Prime Minister.

The government had called in the administrators to clean out the Health Services Union, the Workplace Relations Minister, Bill Shorten, had gone harder than Gillard regarding the gravity of Peter Slipper's alleged sexual harassment, and tongues were flapping again about the leadership.

Britain's border control was under fire Saturday as lawmakers and passengers alike voiced frustration about lengthy queues at London's main airport three months out from the Olympics.

Huge queues at passport control were reported on Thursday and Friday at London Heathrow, the world's busiest international passenger airport, which will be the main gateway for the 2012 Games that get under way on July 27.

Passengers waited for up to an hour on Friday to go through the checks at Terminal 5, while there were two-hour queues on Thursday for passport holders from outside the 30-country European Economic Area (EEA).

There is a lot of crap being pushed by climate change denialists, including Jo Nova — an intellectual pigmy trying to be as dicky as Alan Jones and as idiotic as Andrew Bolt. But she tries supporting Minchin's complete and utter mind-blowing cloddy mind by asking one of the scientists on the panel of Q&A (last Monday night) to apologise to Minchin for a so-called error: apparently this is what happened (I won't take you to her horrible website) :

ABC Biased. Scientist Matthew England, outrageous error or dishonest? Nick Minchin owed an apology

Rupert Murdoch called his News of the World tabloid an "aberration" overnight, accusing journalists of hiding phone-hacking from himself, his son James and his protegee Rebekah Brooks, and said he wished he had shut it down sooner.

from Crikey .....

HSU: NUW withdraws Jackson support as Shorten moves in

Crikey senior journalist Andrew Crook writes:

BILL SHORTEN, HEALTH SERVICES UNION, HSUEAST, KATHY JACKSON

Three targeted Americans: a career government intelligence official, a filmmaker and a hacker. None of these US citizens was charged with a crime, but they have been tracked, surveilled, detained - sometimes at gunpoint - and interrogated, with no access to a lawyer. Each remains resolute in standing up to the increasing government crackdown on dissent. 

In August 2009 James Murdoch delivered the MacTaggart Lecture. It is the keynote address at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, and the annual corroboree of the leading players in Britain's television world.

James Murdoch was at the top of his game. He was News Corp's chairman and chief executive in Europe and Asia, in charge of the company's British newspapers and its interests in the satellite broadcaster BSkyB.

He arrived on the platform to thunderous applause and delivered a speech scathing of the industry regulator Ofcom, ''unaccountable institutions'' like the BBC and the ''authoritarianism'' of government media agencies.