Voters are being prepared for Tony Abbott to emulate West Australian Premier Colin Barnett and backflip on numerous election promises, according to high-profile WA Labor candidate Alannah MacTiernan.

from david marr ….

"That was a disgrace. One of these men is going to be our prime minister on 8 September and neither had a fresh policy, a new idea or a new line to offer.

image from Der Spiegel...

At the specialty chemicals giant Evonik, managers are required to store their mobile phones in cookie tins during meetings, the idea being that the tins will serve as Faraday cages that prevent anyone from listening in on the conversations.

Ferdinand Piëch, the chairman of Volkswagen's supervisory board, has conference rooms regularly swept for bugs, and the company even has its own airline, Volkswagen Air Services. The planes are registered in the Cayman Islands, but not in order to avoid paying taxes. Instead, the point is to make the aircraft less recognizable as VW planes so that passenger lists are not readily accessible.

Dear Mr Murdoch

In a new report released Wednesday by the Pew Research center, Americans indicated that when it comes to what they expect from their country, all they really want is to be safe, happy, rich, comfortable, and entertained at absolutely all times.

Perhaps we’ll never know if intercepted chatter between al-Qaeda leaders - which prompted the U.S. government to close dozens of diplomatic missions in the Muslim world and to issue a worldwide travel alert - was serious or not. But mischief shouldn’t be ruled out.

Beef prices were already rising because ranchers sold off a lot of cattle during last year's dry weather.