Hundreds of people have gathered in kayaks and small boats for a protest in the north-western US port city of Seattle against oil drilling in the Arctic by the Shell energy giant.

Paddle in Seattle is being held by activists who say the firm's drilling will damage the environment.

It comes after the first of Shell's two massive oil rigs arrived at the port.

The firm wants to move them in the summer to explore for oil off Alaska's northern coast.

Earlier this week, Shell won conditional approval from the US Department of Interior for oil exploration in the Arctic.

Just as Labor refuses to accept any responsibility for the fiscal handicap the country now faces, the [Abbott] Government resolutely refuses to concede that its performance on debt and deficit is no better.

With a tiger's pounce that blindsided everyone, George Brandis has moved ruthlessly to carve out his own arts fiefdom. But in doing so, he has taken on an industry with a loud voice, writes Ben Eltham.

Politicians love a sporting analogy. Only war (the one waged on drugs, for example) gives sport a run for its money in the political metaphor stakes.

Peppering your speech with sporting references is seen as a way of avoiding that most unforgivable of political sins: appearing out of touch with the "average punter". Just think of Tony Abbott's "captain's calls" or Julie Bishop praising the PM for his talents in the "change rooms".

....

"It's not unlike, you know, the way that a prop forward takes the ball up," said the Cronulla Sharks diehard.

Treasury officials will not be interrogated about the Abbott government's much-anticipated second budget this year by Australia's chief economists.

When Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg invented the movable type in 1439, he and his fellow printers discovered that the great advantage of simplifying the printing process was to make serious money by selling printed books for nearly the same price as hand-written manuscripts. By 1500, the price of books had dropped by 4/5ths.

We've publicly called for Mr Newman to resign as business advisor to the Australian Government over his misleading comments.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk will again move tonight to try to resolve the impasse over the Parliamentary Crime and Corruption Committee (PCCC).

A bizarre conspiracy theory about a military takeover of the US state of Texas has surfaced after the US military announced it would be taking part in a training exercise there.

Okay... Loades sells car insurance, house and apartment insurance... Loades' NRMA would be keen to have more cars on the roads. Though liberating Parramatta Road from traffic could be good, having new apartment blocks all along the way, the traffic will soon become more jammed than ever... Hum, Who knows. Unless the new road is a 3 lanes deep tunnel each way, all BELOW ground, Parramatta Road will remain a snake pit — especially if it is done as a half sunk monster as per the 1980s Greiner plan, with more people living along it.