We wanted to pass on this message from Mark, a GetUp member and local farmer on the Murray Darling.

Dear Members of GetUp,

My name is Mark Etheridge and along with my partner Mog and our daughters Clancy and Lily, we run a 50,000 hectare certified organic farm near Wilcannia in the Murray Darling Basin.

Over time, we have seen a steady decline in the quality of the water. In the past 15 years we have experienced 13 algal blooms, high salinity and many cease to flow events. These events are getting more and more frequent threatening our farm, and the farms of many others.

picture by Gus

We have the choice of burning all the oil left and hacking down all the remaining rainforests - or saving humanity

The Greek tragedy that is now befalling Strauss-Kahn is the latest in a series of similar cases of sex-related scandal that over the past few years have also involved former World Bank boss Paul Wolfowitz and former Malaysian finance minister (and close friend of Wolfowitz) Anwar Ibrahim.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott is enjoying a big jump in popularity after last week's federal budget and the Government's asylum seeker deal with Malaysia.

A Herald/Nielsen poll has Mr Abbott's approval rating above Prime Minister Julia Gillard for the first time.

He rose three points to 45 per cent, while Ms Gillard slipped two points to 43 per cent.

Ms Gillard, however, has maintained her lead as preferred prime minister, 47 to 42 per cent.

About six in 10 voters polled are against the asylum seeker-swapping deal with Malaysia, while about eight in 10 said it would not make any difference to boat arrivals.

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Late one night last November, a plane carrying dozens of Colombian men touched down in this glittering seaside capital. Whisked through customs by an Emirati intelligence officer, the group boarded an unmarked bus and drove roughly 20 miles to a windswept military complex in the desert sand.

The Colombians had entered the United Arab Emirates posing as construction workers. In fact, they were soldiers for a secret American-led mercenary army being built by Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of Blackwater Worldwide, with $529 million from the oil-soaked sheikdom.

Barack Obama, who pledged to restore ethical honour to the White House after the Bush years, is now burying himself under an active volcano of lies, mostly but not exclusively concerning the assassination of Osama bin Laden.

There was scarcely a sentence in the President's Sunday night address, or in the subsequent briefing by John Brennan, his chief counter-terrorism coordinator, that has not been subsequently retracted by CIA director Leon Panetta or the White House press spokesman, Jay Carney, or by various documentary records.

WASHINGTON — A missile strike from an American military drone in a remote region of Yemen on Thursday was aimed at killing Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical American-born cleric believed to be hiding in the country, American officials said Friday.

The attack does not appear to have killed Mr. Awlaki, the officials said, but may have killed operatives of Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen.

The media is divided on the story... Here in Orstralya, the Fairfax media is telling it as close as they can from the news wire. It's the one on the left. The Herald Sun, the poster touting the rag on the right — a newspaper from the Murdoch stable — knows far more — as usual.... Actually either Uncle Rupe himself or a couple of his directors at News Corp shot Bin Laden...