The endorsed Liberal candidate for the northern seat of Bass has wasted no time getting into election mode, despite the fact he’s likely to be waiting another 18 months before voters have their say. With the Liberals having no policies to speak of, Nikolic has a free rein: writing letters to newspapers, issuing media releases, kissing babies in public.

So when Nikolic chose to abuse a handful of elderly protestors in the Launceston mall (TT here) because they didn’t agree with his far-right brand of politics, we added him to the list of targets.

ut what did concern us was Nikolic’s next action, informing us that `if we didn’t remove the offending story by 5pm Sunday, he would write to the employers of all the individuals who had ‘‘liked’’ the story.’ He continued to list the names, and employers of some 17 people who had dared tick the `like’ button on Facebook.

The US wanted access to more data with fewer restrictions than the EU felt was fair. However, it appears that after the US pulled out its big gun over this -- threatening to stop allowing EU citizens to visit the US without first obtaining a visa -- the Parliament caved and agreed to the deal.

"This Agreement is contrary to European Treaties and privacy laws and does not meet the minimum criteria set by Parliament itself. Diplomatic relations with the United States appear to be more important than the fundamental rights of our own EU citizens."

A US-based Chinese-language website that has reported extensively on the Bo Xilai scandal in China says it was crippled for several hours by a concerted hacking attack.

It is not clear who launched the attacks, but the manager of Boxun.com, Watson Meng, was quoted as saying he believed they were ordered by China's security services.

It has published a stream of reports and allegations about the fate of Bo Xilai, the politician at the centre of China's biggest political scandal in years.

While we've seen some successes in Germany, it appears that the party has now become the third most popular party in the country, surpassing the Greens.

Its success in Europe is already driving other parties to pay much more attention to the issues that have attracted so much attention for The Pirate Party: internet freedom, free speech, civil liberties, copyright law, patent law, privacy and much more.

The Syrian government has failed to send a "powerful political signal of peace", UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan has told the UN Security Council.

Syrian opposition representatives have said they are committed to the peace plan but that if government troops did not stop firing by Thursday, they would intensify their own operations.

France's president proposed a sweeping new law Thursday that would see repeat visitors to extremist web sites put behind bars — one of several tough measures floated in the wake of a murderous shooting spree.

"Anyone who regularly consults Internet sites which promote terror or hatred or violence will be sentenced to prison," he told a campaign rally in Strasbourg, in eastern France.

Sarkozy has France's far-right nipping at his heels, so he's been under pressure to appear tough. A poll released Thursday by the CSA firm suggested that Sarkozy may benefit politically from a hardening of attitudes toward extremist violence.

Dodd does his usual nod to the fact that the MPAA is "pro-internet" and "pro-innovation" and how any "solution" has to keep a free and open internet. That's funny, because the proposal he backed over the last year didn't actually do that.

He goes on to talk about how an example of "good" legislation was the kind that the MPAA shoved through a few years ago, forcing colleges and universities to become copyright cops. Not surprisingly, Dodd happens to leave out the part where the MPAA was so egregious in lying with bogus stats to get that law passed that it eventually had to admit it lied. Of course, that didn't stop the law from passing.

He concludes by asking the assembled attorneys general for "help" in dealing with this "ever growing problem." Wait, I thought that the MPAA was insisting that the "problem" was getting under control... but now they're admitting that it's "ever growing"? Yeah, okay...

The Syrian army has launched fresh mortar and rocket attacks in the city of Homs, as the government continues a push aimed at crushing rebel forces.

The international community is struggling to find a way to resolve the crisis after Russia and China blocked a UN resolution drafted by Arab and European countries on Saturday.

The UN resolution vetoed by China and Russia backed an Arab League peace plan that would have seen President Assad hand power to a deputy to oversee a transition.

Kader Arif, the European Parliament's rapporteur for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Acta), resigned over the issue on Friday.

"I condemn the whole process which led to the signature of this agreement: no consultation of the civil society, lack of transparency since the beginning of negotiations, repeated delays of the signature of the text without any explanation given, reject of Parliament's recommendations as given in several resolutions of our assembly."

"However, everything is made to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter. I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this masquerade."

Chris Dodd went on Fox News to explicitly threaten politicians who accept MPAA campaign donations that they'd better pass Hollywood's favorite legislation.

"Those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,"

He used Fox News to try to "send a message" to politicians. But the internet already sent a much louder message... and, even worse for Dodd, he bizarrely sent his message in a way that everyone who's already fed up with this kind of corruption can see it too.