Unlike the rest of the world’s nations, Iceland has taken strong steps to reduce some of the in-your-face corruption that led to the global financial crisis. Four former heads of Iceland’s Kaupthing Bank have been sentenced to prison for between three to five years – the heaviest sentence for financial fraud in Iceland’s history.

Why are Australians so unhappy with their lot? Why do we vote for politicians who want to trash our common heritage? Karl Mathiesen spoke to former Greens leader Bob Brown about the 2013 election

Tony Abbott's cheap sloganeering and political bungles have discredited the parliament. That will make it hard for his or any other government to solve real fiscal problems, writes Ben Eltham

The first hundred days of a government is a rather arbitrary yardstick, dating originally to Franklin Roosevelt’s turbulent first months as US president during the Great Depression.

After the 9/11 attacks, the public was told al Qaeda acted alone, with no state sponsors.

But the White House never let it see an entire section of Congress’ investigative report on 9/11 dealing with “specific sources of foreign support” for the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals.

It’s time for our annual round-up of the biggest Pinocchios of the year. This was not a presidential election year, so in some ways the subjects that needed to be fact checked were more substantive. In reviewing The Fact Checker’s more than 200 columns in the past year, we found an interesting evolution from statistics about gun violence to claims about President Obama’s health-care law. Our general rule of thumb held: the more complex a subject is, the more tempted politicians are to make misleading claims...

On the day that Joe Botch-Up lays down his "crooked" budget blown out like a Picard helium ballon at 45,000 feet, we're in for a treat from the merde-och press... Pass the mustard and spread it thick.

With its usual contempt in double layers, the boffins at the Scheiße-press lay the blame of the disastrous incompetence, petty infantilism, nasty heartlessness and grand shame of the dizzy silly Abbott government onto the previous Labor government with such a large spoon, it would be funny if it was not so tragic...

Treasurer Joe Hockey believes Tuesday's Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook will expose once and for all the depth of the damage done to the national balance sheet by the last Labor government.

The Treasurer will deliver the MYEFO statement at lunch time on Tuesday in a televised address to the National Press Club.

Search giant insists lawsuit concerning UK internet users' privacy should be brought in California where it is based.

Google has been called "arrogant and immoral" for arguing that a privacy claim brought by internet users in the UK should not be heard by the British legal system.

Eleven EU member states are pushing ahead with a plan to introduce a tiny tax on financial transactions. Four Europe's five largest economies are among them. Guess which one is missing?

I could but only bite at the news, coming hot on the heels of the announcement of Holden's Adelaide plant, that the 2017 Commodore would be made in China.

THE HAPPY SQUANDER

(Sung mostly to the tune of the song with the Val-de-Ri Val-de-ra chorus)

I'm True Blue as Colonel Sanders or a Chinese Commodore,

but all their stuff's so bloody cheap, should a cobber pay any more?

Selling Australian voters to the highest bidder.