US Republican front-runner Donald Trump says he could stand in New York's Fifth Avenue "and shoot somebody" and not lose voters.

Yet, large and growing minorities in every country of Europe, and now in America, believe that not only is this proposition absurd, the end result could be national suicide. And when one considers the millions who are flocking to Trump and Sanders, it is hard to believe that the establishments of the two parties, even if they defeat these challengers, can return to same old interventionist, trade, immigration, and war policies.

A mooted succession plan in Bronwyn Bishop’s Sydney seat has been denounced by local Liberal party members as “North Korean nepotism”.

Just hours after the UK Parliament’s vote to bomb Syria on December 2, four British jets were scrambling from their base in Cyprus, on their way to strike oilfields held by ISIS.

Rupert Murdoch, executive co-chairman of Fox News' parent company, wrote on Twitter that while Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz "bets uniting white conservatives/evangelicals enough [...] Trump appealing across party lines. Surely the winning strategy".

Over the past decade Australia bet hundreds of billions of dollars that the rest of the world wasn't serious about tackling climate change. It looks like we lost. World demand, and in turn the prices we receive for our precious raw materials, are collapsing under the weight of the oversupply we helped cause. While demand for coal stubbornly refuses to live up to the optimistic forecasts of Australian politicians, the price of renewables keeps falling faster than its most ambitious boosters predicted.

Is the hydrocarbon economy too big to fail?