PLANKING, TORNADOES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS

Plankers continued undeterred by the death of one young man and several planking-related sackings. (YouTube)

LISA ZILBERPRIVER - SBS

Nauru, East Timor, Papua New Guinea... Australia's list of asylum-seeker 'solutions' reads like the itinerary of a rather lovely cruise.

Well now it's Malaysia that's been added to the list of palmy locations, with the government planning to play swapsies. Malaysia would be the last resort (get it?!) for 800 asylum seekers of every 4,000 refugees.

The odd thing is, the vast majority of Australia's asylum seekers never set foot on the deck of a boat on their way here. They come by plane. While we mull a 'Pacific Solution' most of them eschew the mightily-dangerous but visible Rickety Boat Solution.

It's perhaps revelations like that which keep pushing our 'Asylum seekers: myths and facts' article into the top ten. This week it took out number one, as evermore readers take notice of the ever more nonsensical-sounding 'solutions' proposed by both sides of politics. Like people-swapping, for example.

But nevermind all that. In second place, our weekly gallery of images that made the week the week it was. This one featured the Queen, the Governator and a photo of a space shuttle bursting through the clouds, taken bya presumably-startled airline passenger.

And in third - tornadoes hit us!

Actually they didn't - as the URL, stripped of capital letters suggests - hit us, rather, they hit the US. But one can't help wondering whether the apparent first-person was the real reason our gallery of the southeast's misfortune clicked into third place.

Hopefully that cynicism's out of place - the storms that tore down the customary tornado-season path killed 122 people in just one Missouri town, not to mention thoroughly destroying hundreds of homes.

And there was more death and destruction, but this time Mother Nature was not the perpetrator. The Pakistani Taliban claimed an attack in Karachi that killed at least five. The Taliban mentioned this was another act of vengeance for Osama Bin Laden's death, though to a lay-journo,the frequency of such strikes hasn't changed a heck of a lot.

Next up, a super-local yarn - an unusual pick for SBS audiences. A teen was killed in station stabbing in Sydney's west, with some TV reports quickly connecting the attack to gangs.

From the location-specific to the omnirelevant: the world was supposed to end last Saturday, but as you've probably noticed, it didn't.

The US Christian Evangelist leader who predicted the apocalypse (which was to come in the form of a gigantic earthquake) said he planned to watch doomsday on TV.

As it happens, he owns an entire TV network, the shameless self-plugger.

Seventh place segued from the Earth's relationship with heaven to its neighbour, the Moon. An American woman tried to flog a chunk of Moon rock to a NASA investigator for $1.6 million, flying blatantly in the face of US laws that state the stuff is a national treasure and can't be sold.

And speaking of flying, there were no details on how she got hold of it.

The Pope, that ol' party pooper, shut down a monastery that hosted Madonna herself - though not so much the virgin kind as the 'Like a Virgin' kind. Apparently the place was also putting on shindigs that involved bizarre 'contemporary' dances with crucifixes around the altar. But Benedict was having none of it, and the party's over for now.

Enough of wisecracks. Ninth place was taken by the properly heartwarming tale of Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish. The man with the complicated name had a simple message: we should all just get along. Pretty extraordinary someone whose family was killed by Israeli shells in Gaza. And in case you don't have time to watch the beautiful piece put together by Chiara Pazzano, he extends his love and forgiveness to Israel too.

And alack, though we almost made it to tenth spot without a mention of planking, it was not to be.

We made a plethora of attempts to move the story of the Internet-craze-turned-deadly on with reactions, analysis pieces and even blogs.

But, as though adhering to a planking-purism code of ethics - our dear readers clicked most of all on the original article: Cops crack down on planking craze.

*Lisa Zilberpriver - World News Australia Multimedia Journalist