Vienna - After Austria's far-right parties won 27 additional parliamentary seats in Sunday's elections, a new batch of legislators known for their extremist views and affiliations is set to step onto the national political stage.

Heinz-Christian Strache's Freedom Party and Joerg Haider's smaller Alliance for the Future of Austria were known for their anti- immigration and anti-Islamic sentiments before Sunday.

But as the parties collected 29 per cent of the vote (18 per cent for the Freedom Party and 11 per cent for the Alliance), politicians who were used to spreading their views without attracting media attention are about to enter the spotlight.

Washington - Barely a month after her spectacular entrance into national politics as the Republican vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin has gone from shaking up the campaign to being the preferred object of mockery of critics around the United States.

"Pathetic," one commentator called her on CNN.

"Governor, bow out," wrote another in Newsweek.

The histrionic TV satire Saturday Night Live is enjoying a second youth based on imitating the Alaska governor.

New York - New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a successful politician after a life as a financier, plans to seek a reversal a local law limiting mayors to two terms of four years each so he can run again, news reports said Wednesday.

Bloomberg, who founded the financial data services bearing his name before entering politics, planned to announce his candidacy for a third term on Thursday and to propose a revision of the 15-year-old term limits law.

Munich  - The premier of Bavaria, Guenther Beckstein, announced Wednesday he would step down, making him the second casualty of a disastrous election setback for his conservative party, the Christian Social Union (CSU).

On Tuesday, the CSU leader, Erwin Huber, was the first to say he would leave. The CSU had elected the two men to their posts a year ago.

Beckstein said at a brief news conference he would not be available to lead the planned coalition government in the state, because he lacked the "necessary degree of support" within the CSU.

Washington, Oct 1: Governor Sarah Palin maintained a private e-mail account that she used to communicate with a small circle of staff members outside the state government’s secure official e-mail system, according to the Wasilla company that established the site.

The account was separate from the Yahoo e-mail address that was abruptly abandoned by the McCain campaign on September 17, the day hackers penetrated the account and posted pages from it on the Internet. Palin had routinely used her Yahoo address for state business, the Washington Post reported.

London, Oct 1: To back efforts to stop polar bears being protected as an endangered species, Governor Sarah Palin and her officials in the Alaskan state government drew on the work of at least six scientists known to be sceptical about the dangers and causes of global warming.

The Guardian reported that some of the scientists were funded by the oil industry.