The state government has bowed to pressure from Fred Nile and will consider removing ethics classes from schools only months after they began.

A deal the Christian Democratic Party MP says he has struck with the Premier, Barry O'Farrell, places at risk the Coalition's election promise not to remove the classes, which began in February under the former Labor government as an alternative to religious education lessons.

But it also presents Mr Nile and the government with a potential compromise over the issue, on which neither has been willing to give ground since it re-emerged two weeks ago.

The facts of the crisis over the debt ceiling aren’t complicated. Republicans have, in effect, taken America hostage, threatening to undermine the economy and disrupt the essential business of government unless they get policy concessions they would never have been able to enact through legislation. And Democrats — who would have been justified in rejecting this extortion altogether — have, in fact, gone a long way toward meeting those Republican demands.

The United States Air Force has been training young missile officers about the morals and ethics of launching nuclear weapons by citing passages from the New Testament and commentary from a former member of the Nazi Party, according to newly released documents.

The mandatory Nuclear Ethics and Nuclear Warfare session, which includes a discussion on St. Augustine's "Christian Just War Theory," is led by Air Force chaplains and takes place during a missile officer's first week in training at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority is investigating a complaint about alleged inaccuracies in statements on climate change by broadcaster Alan Jones.

GetUp! had made a complaint, which it believed was not being pursued by the broadcasting regulator, but the Herald has learned ACMA is investigating the GetUp! complaint, and some others, concerning Mr Jones.

If the complaint is upheld, Mr Jones may be asked to acknowledge the statement was wrong and promise not to repeat it.

The complaint says the 2GB broadcaster was wrong when he stated human beings produce only 0.001 per cent of carbon dioxide in the air.

The violent upheavals that have marked 2011 in the Arab world have led to some astonishing statements, from France's foreign minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, suggesting that French forces should help the Tunisian regime deal with protesters (she lost her job) to US Vice-President Joe Biden's assertion that Egypt's Hosni Mubarak was not a dictator (he kept his).

Guess what happens next...

from Crikey .....

One man's terrorist is another man's freak

Piers Kelly of Crikey language blog Fully (Sic) writes:

After the prestigious Tour de France is won by an Australian for the first time in its 108 years, Cycling Australia chief Graham Fredericks tells the world Australia deserves to be considered a ''major cycling country''.

Surely all we need now is a keen cyclist for PM?

Sophie York Turramurra

Australia's retail sector is in all sorts of bother. After almost 20 years of buying up big, and borrowing to pay the bills, Australians are saving again. In most comparable countries, the global financial crisis burst domestic property bubbles.

But here, the housing bubble has remained intact. Property prices in Australia, even at entry level, are outrageously high. Having looked overseas and seen what can happen to families and societies when they are too exposed to debt, Australians are doing the prudent thing - putting some of their earnings away and trying to maximise the value of every dollar they spend.

In the marketing world, people jump ship all the time. The chief executive of such-and-such a firm, having for years demanded unconditional loyalty from his team, will join his company's most hated rival. Struggling brands will poach their competitor's creative director in order to get themselves back into play.

Betrayal? Of course not. It's called ''doing business'' and nobody bats an eyelid. So, is Malcolm Turnbull about to jump ship? Could he do business with Labor?

from Crikey ....

Kevin Andrews rides again in Malaysian solution

Charles Richardson writes:

The earth is a flexible fluid planet... I mean it is made of liquid and I don't mean the oceans. I am referring to what lies below the thin crusty surface. One should realise that with a diameter of nearly 13,000 kilometres, the continental crust is only about 40 kilometres thick on average while the oceanic crust is barely 7 kilometres thick on average. The hot liquid magma below is never far from the surface. Gravity holds the earth firmly as a liquid ball with a crust.

“Living with the greenhouse effect” was the subtitle of my October, 1988, cover story for Discover Magazine — my first lengthy exploration of the science pointing to a growing human influence on climate. The cover line on the piece, which followed a scorching summer across much of the country, was, “This summer was merely a warmup.”