WORLD

With 2011 well under way it might be worth reflecting on the fact that this year will mark the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on 11 September and the beginning of the still raging war in Afghanistan.

The federal fiscal policy debate is being overwhelmed by a growing sense that America must slash its deficit now, before it is too late. Actually, the United States is in no danger of a Treasury debt crisis and can carry far more debt than people believe without dire consequences.

United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), the top militant group fighting in the country's remote northeast for almost three decades has dropped its demand for independence in talks with New Delhi, softening its stand in an insurgency that has killed thousands of people.

The Coalition's Business Secretary, Vincent Cable, has come under serious criticism after it emerged that he told undercover reporters that he had "declared war" on Rupert Murdoch.

On Tuesday, 14 December 2010, Silvio Berlusconi, the controversial Prime Minister of Italy, survived a confidence vote in both houses of the Italian parliament. He won by a comfortable margin in the upper house, the Senate, but in the lower, the Chamber of Deputies, his majority was a wafer-thin three votes, 314 to 311.

It's not often that an article in the Guardian interests me, but yesterday between the regular complaints about the cuts and the stories of the plight of downtrodden workers in far away places, there was a real gem of a piece about the Chinese dissident and now Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo.

Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables reveal BP suffered a blowout on an Azerbaijan gas platform in September 2008 and was fortunate to evacuate workers safely after a blast that preceded the one that killed 11 workers in the Gulf of Mexico in April, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported. Other cables leaked by the web site Wikileaks claim Azerbaijan's president accused BP of stealing oil from his country and using "mild blackmail" to secure rights to develop vast gas reserves in the Caspian...

If a week is a long time in politics, then Brian Cowen must be wishing that the relatively short time remaining between now and the next general election in Ireland feels like a decade to the electorate. With the latest polls showing his Fianna Fáil Party's ratings to be around 13 per cent after a lost by-election in Donegal and the first stage of an austerity Budget being passed on 07 December 2010, the Party needs all the time it can get to restore its fortunes.

The English Defence League has denied reports that it invited Pastor Terry Jones to speak at its rally on 5 February. Pastor Jones was the American pastor who caused outrage in the Muslim world by threatening to burn a Koran on the anniversary of the 11 September terrorist attacks.

The shade of Éamon de Valera must be having a wry smile. The party he founded in 1926, Fianna Fáil, was well and truly hammered in the Donegal South West by-election, losing to the candidate of Sinn Féin on 26 November 2010. As Fionnan Sheahan, Political Editor of the Irish Independent newspaper on Saturday, 27 November points out: "The party brand name hasn't won a by-election since 1925, when the post Civil-War version of the organisation was led by Éamon de Valera -- so the result wil...

An unknown number of North Korean officials secretly defected to South Korea at the beginning of this year or at the end of 2009, according to a cable released yesterday by Wikileaks.

North Korea's latest tantrum, which has cost the lives of two South Korean soldiers, is a worrying development in the region, which appears to be getting more unstable every year thanks to the unpredictable actions of the murderous regime in Pyongyang.

The Irish government has confirmed that it will receive a bailout from the European Union, following a week of speculation and pressure on the country.

After most of the results were declared for America's 2010 Midterm Election last week, the Democrats won consolations whilst the Republicans, at first glance, have most to celebrate. The Republicans won back the Lower House, narrowly lost the Upper House and have a large majority of the State Governors. The real loser was President Obama who was not finding office too easy with majorities in both Houses, a majority that until the loss to the Republicans of Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts se....

On 14 October 2010, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California and former "Terminator" actor, was photographed on the steps of No. 10 Downing Street meeting his friend and British Prime Minister, David Cameron. Mr Cameron joked with the gathered reporters that the Governor would help to "terminate the budget deficit", before the pair turned and walked back into No 10. There is little doubt that the deficits of both the UK and California would be amongst the topics the two po...

London is expected to see the largest number of job losses as a result of government cuts, but Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and North-east England are likely to suffer more proportionally, a new report claims.

Rich Iott, a Republican and Tea Party candidate for Congress in Ohio, has run into trouble after a photo of him dressed as an SS soldier found its way to the press.

The final, practical outcome of Labour's Conference, the election of the Shadow Cabinet and their allotted roles on the Opposition Benches was announced last week. A process, seen by many in Labour's own ranks as needlessly complex, excluded some former Cabinet members of previous administrations and allowed the new Labour Leader, Ed Miliband, to stamp his own authority on his cohort by deciding the precise roles each of the elected will play. Mr Miliband's choice for the post of Sha...

It was entirely predictable that even though Pastor Terry Jones of Florida called off his distasteful Koran burning to mark 11 September, others, with even less sense than he had, would go ahead with their own burning.

The Communication Workers Union has said it will oppose plans to privatise the Royal Mail, saying the offer of 10 per cent of shares to the workforce is "patronising".

Shares in BP were up on the FTSE 100 in morning trading after the Macondo oil well was declared "dead" by US officials yesterday.

The plan to burn copies of the Koran by Pastor Terry Jones in Florida was immature, insensitive, crass, vulgar and is to be condemned by all right thinking people.

"After the Allied victory of 1918...the victors divided up the lands of their former enemies. In the space of just seventeen months, they created the borders of...and most of the Middle East. And I have spent my entire career...watching the people within those borders burn".

Transport for London has unveiled a set of plans aimed at minimising the impact of a major tube strike, due to take place on Monday, following the breakdown of talks yesterday.

The latest Unemployment figures announced on 11 August 2010 did at least look good. The level reduced by 0.2 percent on the quarter to 7.8 percent, the same level as this time last year. Unemployment for the three months to June 2010 fell to 2.46 million, a fall of 49,000, the largest quarterly drop for three years. Mr Chris Grayling, Employment Minister, told the BBC that what he found encouraging was that "there had been one of the biggest jumps for a very long time in employment levels,...

The pound was down against the dollar this afternoon ahead of a statement due today from the U.S. Federal Reserve and following weak economic data from Britain.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, has survived an apparent assassination attempt, it is being reported.

Now however BP faces yet more attacks as U.S. legislators are looking not just at BP's safety precautions in the Gulf of Mexico, but at the possibility that the company may have lobbied for the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the man convicted of killing 270 people with the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988. Of the 270 victims 190 were from the U.S.

The President of Croatia Ivo Josipovic has visited the Serbian capital of Belgrade in what has been hailed as a historic milestone in the relationship between the two countries which fought a bloody war in the 1990s.