Drowning Globe

Brisbane, Australia

The news wires were full of reports over the last two weeks of horrendous flooding across Sri Lanka, Brazil and Australia. All three nations have suffered greatly at the hands of our increasingly tumultuous weather conditions.

The Australian treasurer has stated the the floods in his country will be the biggest National Disaster in the State's history, in economic terms. The waters inundated the country's third largest city Brisbane and 45 other townships across four states have been effected. So far the death toll has reached 22, however, this has expected to rise in heavily battered Queensland. The floods are expected to cut 1% off of the rate of economic growth equal to $6bn according to the central bank. The Greens, the smaller partner in Julia Gillard's minority Government have agreed somewht controversially that it should be the oil companies who should pay for the costs, as they have been blamed for causing the global warming which the Australian Government states has directly caused the floods.

Homosexuals Hopeful in the Americas

Homosexuals across the Americas are facing a historic period in the history of their civil rights drive. On Wednesday the news wires were awash with the story of a federal judge's overturning of California's ban on same-sex marriage brought in by the Proposition 8 vote at the same time as the last Presidential Election in November 2008.

A similar ruling was made in Mexico's Supreme court yesterday decreeing that a fledgling law allowing for same sex marriage in  the city was not unconstitutional as had been claimed by the federal prosecuters who stated it violated the parts of the constitution which enshrined protection for the family.

Peace in Colombia?

The Southern American Andean nation of Colombia is known for a couple of reasons, drug cartels and Shakira. However, the nation has been embroiled in bitter violence between Government forces and Marxist rebels since the 1960s.

The rebels emerged after a thawing of relations between the two largest political parties in the State in the 1960 after decades of violence. They were founded with generally Marxist doctrines and  the largest of the groups is the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.