Peter Costello says everyone in Australia is enjoying boom times:

"We can say, on average, wages are higher and, of course, there are two million more jobs than there were 10 years ago."

Meanwhile, in Baghdad:

There was a curfew so they couldn’t take me to hospital. They called for an ambulance but were told it wasn’t safe to come to to our district, Amiriya.

For two hours I screamed with the pain as my family sobbed with me.

I was bleeding heavily by the time I felt my tiny baby slipping out of me. Suddenly there he was, lying on the sitting room floor at the end of the umbilical cord. He was blue and still.

“Please do something, please help him,” I cried. “I want him to grow up with me.”