Gwynne Dyer

As the 26-year war in Sri Lanka nears its end, every busybody in the world is urging the Sri Lankan Government to stop.

Thailand's Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva was humiliated a week or two ago when red-shirted protesters overran the summit of Asian leaders he was hosting and forced him to evacuate them by helicopter, but now he is back in control.

The United States Navy has more than half the major warships in the world, and there is a pirate threat off the Somali coast.

"We want to be in , we want to be pragmatic, we want to look at the science," said Jonathan Pershing, the head of the US delegation, during the talks on cutting greenhouse gas emissions in Bonn last week.

The French city of Strasbourg and the German town of Kehl, which face each other across the River Rhine, will be in lock-down this weekend as the grandees of Nato (the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) gather to celebrate the alliance's 60th anniversary and protesters home in on the site from all over Europe.

On Sunday, the 180,000 people of the island of Mayotte will decide whether they would like to become the 101st department of France.

You have to admire Barack Obama's attempt to re-open the lines of communication with Iran - but you don't have to admire it much.

Over the past year the United States and Russia have been drifting into a hostile relationship, driven by the US decision to install anti-missile defences in eastern Europe, the war in Georgia last August, and the recent fiasco over Russian natural gas supplies to Europe.

Big crises like the current recession change a lot of things that once seemed to be a permanent part of the landscape. In Japan the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has governed the country for all but nine months of the past half century, is about to go over a cliff.

The greatest mistakes are made on the morrow of the greatest victories.

On February 11, in Harare, Morgan Tsvangirai drank the poisoned chalice, knowing that it was poisoned.

The biggest "environmental" issue in Britain for the past year has been the plan to build a third runway at London's Heathrow airport.

You aren't really the United States president until you've ordered an air strike on somebody, so Barack Obama is certainly president now: two in his first week in office.

President Barack Obama's inauguration increases the likelihood of a major terrorist attack in the United States.

Ehud Olmert really doesn't care any more.

If Barack Obama can walk on water, then change really is coming to the United States and the world.