The biblical formula "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" is generally taken to mean that people should recognise the authority of the State in secular matters, but that is not necessarily what Jesus meant by it.
As a general rule, we should all encourage and support international co-operation. Once in a while, however, a proposal comes along that is so disconnected from reality that you check the date in case it's April Fool's Day.
The very public row over the Israeli Government's humiliation of US vice-president Joe Biden has led to excited speculation that the US Government might actually defy Israel this time. Don't hold your breath.
There are notable differences between Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president of the United States, and Umaru Yar'Adua, the current president (more or less) of Nigeria.
"Enough. No more. The army's morale is broken," said General Ilker Basbug, the chief of staff of the Turkish army, but the humiliations continue.
Everybody assumes that Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, carried out the murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior Hamas commander, in Dubai last month.
Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina's finest writer, dismissed the Falklands War of 1982 as two bald men fighting over a comb, but it killed almost 1000 British and Argentine soldiers, sailors and airmen anyway.
"We astounded the world in 1990 and in 1994, and we shall do so again," wrote former South African president FW de Klerk on the 20th anniversary of the day in February 1990 when he announced the end of the apartheid system.
Eight months ago (and 10 months before regional elections were due to be held all over the country), French President Nicolas Sarkozy raised a vital issue before the French Parliament.
At the Iraq inquiry in London on January 29, former British prime minister Tony Blair found a new way to defend his decision to join George W. Bush in invading Iraq in 2003: the what-if defence.
Ban Ki-moon is not the best secretary-general the United Nations ever had, but he has grasped the essential nature of his job.
Barack Obama had worse failures to address in his State of the Union message on Thursday, but a few days before, he owned up to the most foolish miscalculation that his Administration had made in its first year in power.
Is it megalomania or just a political stunt? Senegal's President, Abdoulaye Wade, may not even know the answer himself, but his offer to let quake-stricken Haitians resettle in his West African country certainly qualifies as the most flamboyant response to the tragedy in Haiti.
First, the good news. Sri Lanka's Government, whose 26-year war against the separatist Tamil Tigers ended in total victory last May, is keeping its promise to let all of the 300,000 Tamil civilians who were captured in the final battle go home again.
Alan Watkins is my favourite British journalist. Well into his 70s now, each week he still produces an elegant and knowing column, usually about British politics. And with a casual understatement that you might easily mistake for irony, he has for the past six years regularly referred to former prime minister Tony Blair as "the young war criminal".
Copenhagen is turning into exactly the sort of shambles everybody feared it would be.
Sometimes the best is the enemy of the good - and sometimes "good enough" is the enemy of all mankind.
It can't have taken three months to write the speech that President Barack Obama gave at West Point last week, but clearly much thought went into his decision to send 30,000 more American troops to Afghanistan.
It was ostensibly about obscenity, but it was really about corruption and censorship - and in the end, justice prevailed.
President Barack Obama's Asian trip has been on the political calendar for many months.
