In the US a 21-year-old student has pleaded not guilty to charges of hacking into the personal e-mail account of Sarah Palin (pictured above), the Alaska governor and former Republican vice-presidential nominee. David Kernell, a University of Tennessee student, faces 4 charges after allegedly using publicly available information about Mrs Palin to guess the password to her Yahoo! e-mail account while she was on the campaign trail last September. Kernell, the son of a Democratic Tennessee legislator, is accused of correctly answering a series of personal security questions to reset the password. He is said to have read the e-mails, made screenshots and posted his exploits on the web using the nickname “rubico.” The indictment said that at least one other person followed a similar path into Mrs Palin’s account. Some material from the e-mail account was posted on the Wikileaks website. The thing that mystifies me about all that ? Well, she’s so thick, what would be worth reading on her e-mail account ?

This blog doesn’t often reproduce cartoons from newspapers – and now I’ve done it 2 entries running. But the above parody by the brilliant UK cartoonist Gerald Scarfe in the Times says everything about Gordon Brown and G20. “Gordon Brown explains quantatitive easing to curious members of G20″. Priceless.

-