Really strange things are happening. I never thought I would see the day when I would be concerned about the effect on the morality of my kids of news coverage of the President of the USA, but there it is, Donald Trump has managed to achieve that. I think Bill Clinton was a warning, but the salacious details of his fling with Monica Lewinsky pale after Stormy Daniels’ recent TV interview. True, then body fluids were involved, but here are relationships, like how Mrs Trump was reacting. Unfavourably, right enough, but is that something 13-year-old boys need to hear? And not on some sleazy Internet site, but on mainstream news channels? Look, Clinton’s cigar was bad enough, so we didn’t need any rolled-up magazine spankings.

The focus seems to be whether the money she was paid during last year’s campaign was an undisclosed campaign expenditure. Also, there’s much being made of how she violated the nondisclosure agreement she signed when taking that money. PTI chief Imran Khan thoroughly approves of this, just as he disapproves of how then New York state Governor Nelson Rockefeller was met with howls of “you dirty lover!” at the 1964 Republican Convention, because he had divorced his wife to marry his second. Trump faced no such problems, even though he’s on his third wife. Heck, it seems he’s not going to face problems even with girlfriends like Stormy Daniels.

Imran Khan would not like any probe into his marriages, or into either Sita or Tyrian White. I dread his winning an election. My kids will have to be forbidden to watch the news. I’m not trying to defend their innocence. I’m trying to avoid embarrassing questions.

Imran has got a connection to more embarrassing questions. Like those posed by Australian captain Steve Smith, who has been caught tampering with the ball in a Test against South Africa. He didn’t actually do any tampering. He merely got opener Cameron Bancroft to do the tampering. Yeah, him and vice-captain Dave Warner. So the captaincy was placed in the hands of the ‘’keeper, Tim Paine, and Steve, Warner and Bancroft all bundled back to Australia. He has been given a one-year ban from playing, as well as a two-year ban from captaining, which would leave him a possibility for captaining the Ashes if Paine doesn’t work out.

The real surprise was why he was banned, by the chief of Cricket Australia no less: “Australia’s core values of respect, integrity and fairness must be brought to bear on the game of cricket through such a process,” CA had said after the scandal surfaced. Weren’t core values sledging, getting drunk on beer and puking, and winning at all costs?

I’m sure Imran must be nervous. Can one be disqualified for ball tampering? Of course, Imran never went as far as Shahid Afridi, who tried to eat a ball. But still, you tamper so that there can be reverse swing. And no fast bowler has been punished. So maybe Imran shouldn’t worry too much.

Imran might want to concentrate on KP, whose most famous daughter made a return. Of course, in one year at Oxford, Nobel laureate Malala Yousufzai has learnt that becoming PM wouldn’t solve problems.. Yeah, tell that to Imran, who was rigged out of victory last time.

One person who probably didn’t like the attention the Aussies got was Muhammad Asif, the pacer, who was deported on arrival at the Dubai Airport, because he couldn’t show the letter inviting him to a tapeball tournament. And also because he had been deported in 2008, for possession of opium. A decade on, he wasn’t bringing anything, was he? Incidentally, another person who could throw light on reverse swing. Did he tamper with the ball? Or was he too high to notice?

But maybe Imran is preoccupied by events in Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been quizzed about possible corruption, along with his wife and son. Though the ninth time Netanyahu has been questioned, this is the first time his son has been. The investigation centres around Bzeq, the Israeli mobile phone giant. It seems that Netanyahu got favourable coverage on a website in exchange for policies that allowed Bezeq to benefit by hundreds of millions. The website is owned by Bezeq’s largest shareholder, a guy named Heretz. And you know what? No dharna.

Imran isn’t planning a dharna about the dual-nationality bureaucrats identified by the DG FIA in a report to the Supreme Court. No less than 147 of them. Another 291 are married to dual nationals. A coincidence, I suppose. And I don’t suppose many have dual nationality with countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.