There is one thing to be said for this wretched state government: it has an infinite capacity to stun and amaze.

Just when you think it might be returning to the job of governing, however badly, along comes another scandal to grab the headlines.

It never ends. We have had a paedophile minister, a police minister and his bouncing underpants, the Della Bosca soap opera, the knifing of Nathan Rees, the backbencher from Penrith rorting her expenses, the ongoing comedy double act of Joe Tripodi and Eddie Obeid, and now the awful tale of David Campbell and his visit to a gay sauna.

Education officials in the US state of Texas have adopted new guidelines to the school curriculum which critics say will politicise teaching.

The changes include teaching that the United Nations could be a threat to American freedom, and that the Founding Fathers may not have intended a complete separation of church and state.

Critics say the changes are ideological and distort history, but proponents argue they are redressing a long-standing liberal bias in education.

Analysts say Texas, with five million schoolchildren, wields substantial influence on school curriculums across the US.

Australian customs officers have been given new powers to search incoming travellers' laptops and mobile phones for pornography, a spokeswoman for the Australian sex industry says.

Fiona Patten, president of the Australian Sex Party, is demanding an inquiry into why a new question appears on Incoming Passenger Cards asking people if they are carrying "pornography".

Patten said officials now had an unfettered right to examine travellers' electronic devices, marking the beginning of a new era of official investigation into people's private lives. She questioned whether it was appropriate to search people for legal R18+ and X18+ material.

A North Korean submarine torpedoed one of South Korea's warships near the disputed maritime border in March, investigators said on Thursday, prompting heated denials and threats of war from the North.

The South's President Lee Myung-Bak promised "resolute countermeasures" and the United States, Britain, the United Nations, Japan and Australia strongly condemned the attack which claimed 46 lives.

The communist North said the report, by a multinational investigation team, was based on "sheer fabrication".

It threatened "all-out war" in response to any attempt to punish it.

Is she Miss USA or "Miss Hezbollah USA"?

Some right-wing American bloggers are convinced Rima Fakih is the latter.

When the sparkling tiara was placed atop the Lebanese-born Shiite Muslim's long, dark tresses on Sunday night, making the 24-year-old marketing executive from Dearborn, Mich., the first Muslim woman to win the Miss USA contest, it was just much for some conservative commentators. 

The Federal Opposition is in damage control again after Joe Hockey's appearance at the Press Club descended into what even his own colleagues admit was a "shemozzle" yesterday.

Last week Opposition Leader Tony Abbott told the House of Representatives that Mr Hockey would use yesterday's lunchtime speech to give details of the Coalition's proposed budget savings.

But Mr Hockey's speech did not contain any concrete detail on the savings, a task that was left to finance spokesman Andrew Robb, who briefed journalists on the cuts after Mr Hockey made his exit.

Today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, announced that a new package of sanctions against Iran had been approved by the major powers and would be sent to the UN Security Council later in the day.

In case anyone overlooked the significance of this action, which followed by one day the announcement by Brazil and Turkey of the successful conclusion of their negotiations with Iran, she added: "I think this announcement is as convincing an answer to the efforts undertaken in Tehran over the last few days as any we could provide."

from Crikey .....

Tony Abbott's struggle with the truth

Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

Treasury secretary Ken Henry says there is reason to be sceptical about some of the doomsday predictions sparked by the proposed resources tax changes.

In his annual post-budget address to economists, Dr Henry has argued similar predictions have been made in the past by the mining industry and have not eventuated.

He says some of the commentary around the tax has been confused and incorrect, and he has taken aim at the mining industry's outcry.

"In the last four decades numerous predictions have been made of large scale unemployment and the death of manufacturing, decrying deregulation, decrying tariff cuts and decrying mineral booms," he said.

Google has admitted that for the past three years it has wrongly collected information people have sent over unencrypted wi-fi networks.

The issue came to light after German authorities asked to audit the data the company's Street View cars gathered as they took photos viewed on Google maps.

Google said during a review it found it had "been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open networks".

The admission will increase concerns about potential privacy breaches.

These snippets could include parts of an email, text or photograph or even the website someone may be viewing.

"Well, obviously oppositions have to do two things. First of all, they have to mount an effective critique of the Government and I think we’ve been doing that. Second, they’ve got to present as a credible alternative, they’ve got to convince people that life would be different and better if there was a change and that’s what we’re doing, I hope"

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The US government has demanded immediate clarification from BP over its commitment to pay for costs caused by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Obama administration said it wanted to be sure BP would honour commitments not to limit payments for damages to a US statutory cap of $75m (£50m).

Meanwhile, BP says oil dispersants applied at the source of the leak on Friday have begun to take effect.

Mississippi has become the third US state to have oil wash up on its coast.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8684912.stm

We need to talk about Kevin. Not the homicidal sociopath of Lionel Shriver's grisly best-selling novel, but the Kevin who, until a few weeks ago, was the most popular prime minister of all time.

The fall has been spectacular. Flying too close to the sun, the wax in the wings melted and Icarus plummeted to earth. So contemporary wisdom would have it.

Yet there is rather more to it than that. In the past 18 months there has been a relentless media campaign to destroy the Rudd government, the most savage onslaught upon a federal Labor administration since the Whitlam years.