News bytes

- Tell me something I don't know. Who knew stenography paid so well?

- The neo-cons are restless. Here's Lawrence Kaplan, senior editor at The New Republic, discovering that freedom, democracy and roses won't be coming any time soon in Iraq (perhaps he should have left his ideology at the door before and realised it was never going to happen):

"Gone is the hope that Iraq would be a liberal democratic beacon for the rest of the Arab world. Gone, too, is the hope that liberal democrats would triumph even within Iraq."

- Brit Hume, Fox News commentator: "By historic standards, these casualties [2000 American dead in Iraq] are negligible."

- An Australian playwright tackles the Palestinian issue.

- The Australian Federal Police assisted the Indonesian police in arresting nine Australians with drug possession and trafficking, leading inevitably to a possible death sentence. Australia should be against the death penalty in all cases, all the time, anywhere in the world.