News Corporation's Rupert Murdoch is extending his media empire once again - this time with a digital newspaper for the iPad called the Daily.

Mr Murdoch told an audience at the Guggenheim Museum in New York that he hoped it would be an "indispensable source of news" in the tablet era.

The Daily will cost 99 cents (60p) a week and will be sold exclusively via Apple's iTunes store.

News Corp has hired about 100 journalists to work on it.

The paper will initially only be available in the US.

The Daily will feature news articles, interactive graphics, HD videos and 360 degree photos designed to work with the iPad's touchscreen.

GetUp is extremely successful at running campaigns and does not shy away from High Court challenges.

The detail of the proposed law is that it will criminalise:
* all plants that contain DMT ie:Our beautiful wattles(our national emblem!)
* all plants that contain mescaline ie:Most of our ornamental cactus
* Catha edulis
* all Brugmansia species
* all Datura species: adored by proud gardners everywhere for their beautiful flower

Mother courage or mother knows best? The mother of WikiLeaks founder has launched a scathing attack on Julia Gillard, claiming her son faced a lynch-mob mentality if handed over to Washington, especially after another mother, Sarah Palin, described her boy as an ''anti-American operative with blood on his hands''.

President Barack Obama didn't say much about foreign or military policy in Tuesday night's State of the Union address. To the extent he did talk about it, he spent more time on economic agreements with India, South Korea, and China than on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—and, given the state of the economy and the nature of the political battles ahead, the balance was probably right.

The protests rocking the Arab world this week have one thread uniting them: Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite channel whose aggressive coverage has helped propel insurgent emotions from one capital to the next.

There is some anger at the "Saxon" economists in Davos, from the "Europeans"... The Saxons are defined as the English and the American economists who have been credited with the gloom and doom of 2007-09 (they basically caught the clap and gave it to the rest of the world) and who predicted a greater doom for 2010, which did not eventuate (they had a 50/50 chance). They are now "predicting" the demise of the Euro... which they hope will happen. But China and the Europeans are not going to let it happen...

The worst of the global economic crisis may be over, but it's a weary world converging on Davos, the sleepy town in the Swiss mountains hosting the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

It's a world suffering from "global burnout syndrome", too weak to tackle another global shock, says Professor Klaus Schwab, the man who invented the annual meeting of the world's top business leaders and politicians 41 years ago.

The Federal Opposition is intensifying its campaign against a flood levy to pay for the Queensland flood crisis.

The Government is still working out how to pay for its share of the rebuilding cost, while sticking to its commitment to return the budget to surplus in 18 months' time.

It is considering the idea of a flood levy and Prime Minister Julia Gillard is promising a decision "soon".

But Opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey is urging the Government to focus on budget cuts, and his argument is two-fold.

He said Iran "is doing everything it can to impede progress in the Middle East peace process, and to facilitate a situation in which that region cannot embark on a process of modernisation it so urgently needs".

He added: "And this is not because we have done something. At some point - and I say this to you with all the passion I possibly can - the West has got to get out of what I think is this wretched policy, or posture, of apology for believing that we are causing what the Iranians are doing, or what these extremists are doing. The fact is we are not.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12246410

The possibility that 2010 would emerge as the warmest year on record was raised by scientists after the year began with a period of El Nino conditions - unusually warm waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, which transfer heat from the ocean to the atmosphere.

However, a switch to the opposing La Nina conditions halfway through the year cast doubt on whether the record would be broken.

Although December was exceptionally cold in some places - the coldest for 100 years across the UK - other regions, such as Greenland and eastern Canada, saw unseasonably warm weather.

The WMO notes a number of extreme weather events ocurring during 2010, including: