Anthony Steen said public "jealousy" was fuelling the furore and claimed that taxpayers have no right to see the details of individual MPs' claims.

Mr Steen made his comments in a BBC interview shortly after announcing that he would be standing down at the next election. His decision came after it emerged that he claimed £87,729 over four years to maintain his Devon country house. The payments included money to inspect some of the 500 trees surrounding the property and to guard his shrubs from rabbits.

Unrepentant and newly unbridled, former vice president Richard B. Cheney has embraced two missions in his political retirement: to forcefully defend the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policies and to publicly condemn those who would unravel them.

He did both yesterday, using the drama of a televised feud with President Obama to deliver the blistering accusation that more Americans are likely to die because the president has turned away from George W. Bush's post-Sept. 11, 2001, national security agenda. Cheney seemed eager to fan the flames of the debates raging through Washington.

Tasmanian devils with large facial tumours were photographed in north-east Tasmania during 1996. A decade later, we know these characteristics are consistent with Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD) - a fatal condition in Tasmanian devils, characterised by cancers around the mouth and head.

As at December 2008, the Tasmanian devil disease had been confirmed at 64 different locations across more than 60% of Tasmania's mainland.

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President Barack Obama has proposed tough new rules for vehicle emissions, which could see a 30 per cent reduction in individual passenger car emissions by 2016.

Obama and friends unveil CAFE from the White House Rose Garden.

The new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards also decree that car manufacturers must maintain a fleet fuel consumption average of 43mpg by 2016.

This fuel consumption average includes both commercial vehicles and passenger cars, but 51mpg has been set as the standard for cars and 31mpg for light commercial vehicles. Current standards are 33mpg and 29mpg, respectively.

Miranda Devine

May 21, 2009 ...

You always know when zealotry creeps into a story there is another agenda at work - and that is that the Johns case is a beachhead in the war against masculinity, waged by those who think the only difference between men and women is cultural.

Homo sapiens may have been responsible for butchering Neanderthals in the Stone Age. Evidence for this theory has been found on a jawbone in France. The bone was covered in cut marks similar to those found when humans stripped the flesh from animals.

Montalto is the high peak above Thomas Jefferson's little mountain of Monticello. From this lofty perch you can see Jefferson's life shaped in the land. Far to the right, in the valley, there's the third president's boyhood home, Shadwell.

As you gaze on Monticello itself, 400 feet below and almost a mile distant, you observe the brick Palladian villa. This is not the predominant element. That prize goes to the vegetable garden, a 1,000-foot-long terrace, 80 feet wide, suggesting Noah's ark perched post-flood on Mount Ararat.

Barack Obama will revive the heavily criticised George Bush-era military tribunals for detainees at Guantánamo Bay but will make them fairer, according to US officials.

Obama suspended the tribunals within hours of taking office in January, ordering a review of the military commission system. But he stopped short of abandoning the process altogether.

Pope Benedict XVI upset the schedule on his first day in Israel by leaving an interfaith meeting in Jerusalem early on Monday night after a leading Muslim cleric called on him to condemn the "slaughter" of women and children in the recent assault on Gaza.

The pontiff walked out, a spokesman noted, because Sheikh Tayseer Tamimi's speech was a "direct negation" of dialogue and damaged the Pope's efforts at "promoting peace".

The Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull, proposed a cigarette tax increase last night as he called the Government's early election bluff by announcing the Coalition would block one of the biggest revenue-raising measures in the budget.

The speaker of the US House of Representatives says she was misled by the CIA about the use of harsh methods during terror interrogations.

Nancy Pelosi has been under pressure to clarify what she knew since one of her aides said she had been briefed in 2003 that the CIA had waterboarded suspects.

Critics say the methods amount to torture and that officials who authorised them should be prosecuted.

Ms Pelosi has herself condemned the use of harsh interrogation techniques.

The blonde joke is dead

Peter Costello yesterday mocked Wayne Swan's claims the Howard government was to blame for the battered budget bottom line.

"Here's Wayne Swan, he inherits a budget that is in surplus - and I don't think he will ever produce a surplus budget - he inherits a financial position which has no debt, and we're now looking at putting the commonwealth $200 billion into debt," the former Treasurer told Melbourne radio.

"So don't blame him for the deficit and debt. The people who are responsible are the people who left the budget in surplus and reduced the debt to zero."

A Pakistani offensive against militants in the Swat Valley has displaced some 200,000 people and 300,000 are on the move or about to flee, the UN says.

As jets and helicopters pounded targets in the valley, the UN said it was threatening to become one of the world's biggest displacement crises.

Troops have killed more than 140 militants in the past 24 hours, army spokesman Gen Athar Abbas said.

He said that measures had been taken to provide for fleeing civilians.

Ten of America's largest 19 banks need a combined $74.6bn (£50bn) of extra funds to boost their cash reserves.

That is the main finding of the so-called "stress tests" to see if the banks have sufficient capital to cope should the recession worsen.

Bank of America is the most at risk, needing an additional $33.9bn.

"Our hope with today's actions is that banks are going to be able to get back to the business of banking," said US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.