But that line doesn't make sense, and the sanctions will not achieve their goals. Iran is far from isolated and its friends – like India – will stand by the oil-producing nation until the US either backs down or acknowledges the real matter at hand. That matter is the American dollar and its role as the global reserve currency.

The short version of the story is that a 1970s deal cemented the US dollar as the only currency to buy and sell crude oil, and from that monopoly on the all-important oil trade the US dollar slowly but surely became the reserve currency for global trades in most commodities and goods. Massive demand for US dollars ensued, pushing the dollar's value up, up, and away. In addition, countries stored their excess US dollars savings in US Treasuries, giving the US government a vast pool of credit from which to draw.

We know where that situation led – to a US government suffocating in debt while its citizens face stubbornly high unemployment (due in part to the high value of the dollar); a failed real estate market; record personal-debt burdens; a bloated banking system; and a teetering economy. That is not the picture of a world superpower worthy of the privileges gained from having its currency back global trade. Other countries are starting to see that and are slowly but surely moving away from US dollars in their transactions, starting with oil.

If the US dollar loses its position as the global reserve currency, the consequences for America are dire. A major portion of the dollar's valuation stems from its lock on the oil industry – if that monopoly fades, so too will the value of the dollar. Such a major transition in global fiat currency relationships will bode well for some currencies and not so well for others, and the outcomes will be challenging to predict. But there is one outcome that we foresee with certainty: Gold will rise. Uncertainty around paper money always bodes well for gold, and these are uncertain days indeed.

Spearheaded by the governments of the United States and Japan and constructed largely in the absence of public awareness, the measures of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) dramatically alter current international legal framework, while introducing the first substantial processes of global internet governance. With complete contempt towards the democratic process, the negotiations of the treaty were exclusively held between industry representatives and government officials, while excluding elected representatives and members of the press from their hearings.

Under the guise of protecting intellectual property rights, the treaty introduces measures that would allow the private sector to enforce sweeping central authority over internet content. The ACTA abolishes all legal oversight involving the removal of content and allows copyright holders to force ISPs to remove material from the internet, something that presently requires a court order. ISPs would then be faced with legal liabilities if they chose not to remove content. Theoretically, personal blogs can be removed for using company logos without permission or simply linking to copy written material; users could be criminalized, barred from accessing the internet and even imprisoned for sharing copyrighted material. Ultimately, these implications would be starkly detrimental toward the internet as a medium for free speech.

The Obama Administration subverted the legal necessity of allowing to US Senate to ratify the treaty by unconstitutionally declaring it an “executive agreement” before the President promptly signed it on October 1st, 2011. As a touted constitutional lawyer, Barack Obama is fully aware that Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution, mandates Congress in dealing with issues of intellectual property, thus voiding the capacity for the President to issue an executive agreement. The White House refused to even disclose details about the legislation to elected officials and civil libertarians over concern that doing so may incur "damage to the national security." While some may hang off every word of his sorely insincere speeches and still be fixated by the promises of hope offered by brand-Obama, his administration has trampled the constitution and introduced the most comprehensive authoritarian legislation in America’s history.

This signing ceremony merely formalized the EU’s adoption of ACTA last month, during a completely unrelated meeting on agriculture and fisheries, reports TechDirt. Though initiated by the US, Japan is the official depository of the treaty. Removal of the Three Strikes clause, in which users accused of three counts of piracy would be barred from the internet, paved the way for the EU to adopt ACTA last month.

Related to ACTA, a chapter in the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) “would have state signatories adopt even more restrictive copyright measures than ACTA,” reports the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Both ACTA and TPP were developed without public input and outside international trade groups, like the World Trade Organization and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Leaked cables published by WikiLeaks in 2009 exposed early drafts of ACTA, resulting in a firestorm of controversy. Those cables, coupled with later releases, showed that ACTA negotiations began in 2006 and were controversial even to participating states.

The Pentagon is facing cuts of $487 billion (£310 billion) over the next 10 years. In five years, the Army will drop from a peak of 570,000 to 490,000, and the marines be cut by 20,000, to 182,000. The military's budget would rise, albeit at a slower rate, to $567 billion by 2017. The defence budget could also lose another $500 billion at the end of this year after Congress failed to agree on deficit reduction following a debt-ceiling deal in August.

Some members of Congress did not agree that such a budget would maintain a strong US military. "Taking us back to a pre-9/11 military force structure places our country in grave danger," said Texas Senator John Cornyn, a member of a committee that will hold hearings on the budget plan. Republican hopefuls for president have pointed to the defence cuts as an argument against Mr Obama's re-election. "We simply cannot continue to cut our Department of Defense budget if we are going to remain the hope of the Earth," Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, said in a debate on 16 January.

Forecasters say the UK will be “put in the freezer” with weeks of snow, ice and freezing temperatures set to cause chaos on the roads. The AA yesterday warned motorists lulled into a false sense of security by the mild weather to take extra care as wet roads freeze over, making driving conditions treacherous. The Met Office has severe weather warnings in place today for ice, with snow turning to slush leading to traffic disruption.

Forecaster Helen Chivers said: “We have got cold air coming in from the East, an Atlantic system from the West and the UK is the battleground. It is going to turn cold with the risk of snow cover in the North.” Black ice could turn roads into skating rinks and drivers were warned to be prepared for delays and to check road conditions before setting off.

Last year Britain ground to a halt as one of the coldest winters on record caused transport chaos. Parts of the country were buried under up to a foot of snow for days as temperatures plunged to -20C. But a spokesman for the Local Government Association said yesterday: “Councils are better prepared this winter than they have ever been. Town halls have stockpiled 1.4 million tons of grit, more than was used throughout all of last winter.”

More than half of all black men without a high-school diploma go to prison at some time in their lives. Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today — perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850.

In truth, there are more black men in the grip of the criminal-justice system — in prison, on probation, or on parole — than were in slavery then. Over all, there are now more people under “correctional supervision” in America — more than six million — than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height. That city of the confined and the controlled, Lockuptown, is now the second largest in the United States.

There, Haitian-American artists come to talk about their faith in voodoo and how it keeps them connected to their homeland. "The religion is like a glue," says voodoo priestess Marie Saintil. "We attract each other. If a drum is beating, and someone hears it, the next thing you know, this place is packed." That connection is especially important this month, on the two-year anniversary of the earthquake that devastated Haiti.

Since the quake, voodoo has played an important role in the healing process. Many of these Haitian immigrants have found comfort in the faith and community that voodoo cultivates, practitioners of the religion in the US say. Haitian voodoo (spelt 'vodou' in Creole) is an ancient practice that emerged among the first Africans brought to Haiti as slaves in the 16th Century. Unable to practice their own diverse religions openly, the slaves fused them with the Catholic beliefs of the Spanish and French slavers. From these complex beginnings voodoo has become an important part of Haitian culture, especially for those living far from home.

Voodoo ceremonies do not take place on a weekly basis, like Catholic mass or a Jewish Shabbat service. A voodoo practitioner can request a ritual meeting with a priest or priestess but, more often, ritual ceremonies mark holidays. Practitioners hope to connect with deceased ancestors through a series of songs and prayers. During the singing and drumming, they aim to become possessed by voodoo spirits. "Voodoo is veneration of our ancestors and also our connection to nature," says Brooklyn-based actor Atibon Legba. At a recent ceremony practitioners in the Brooklyn temple celebrated the Gede, an important voodoo spirit who connects with the dead.

It's a move which has tit-for-tat written all over it, but one which could nonetheless have a serious impact: The Iranian government wants to present a bill to parliament this weekend calling for an immediate halt to oil deliveries to Europe. The move, with most reports citing the Iranian news agency Mehr, has come about in response to the EU agreement to impose sanctions against Iran, which were announced earlier this week.

The sanctions banned any new contracts for buying oil from Iran, but allowed existing deals to continue until July in order to give countries time to find other sources. But that process is now at risk after the latest move from Tehran, a step the Iranian government had already threatened. "If this bill is passed, the government will be forced to stop selling oil to Europe before the actual implementation of their sanctions," said Emad Hosseini, spokesman for the Iranian parliament's energy commission. The bill is set to become law on Sunday.

The EU sanctions allow for oil deliveries from Iran until July 1. Any pre-empting of this timescale by Tehran could prove problematic for countries like Italy, Greece and Spain, who would need to urgently find new suppliers.

The World Economic Forum couldn't have found a more suitable keynote speaker. Leading the charge in efforts to save the euro, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has become the most powerful politician in Europe, and the person expected to save its currency from collapsing and wreaking financial havoc worldwide. As the country with the deepest pockets in Europe, expectations are high when it comes to Germany's role in the currency crisis. But even though the world is talking about Germany, when Merkel took to the podium in Davos on Wednesday, she talked about the rest of the world instead.

The first part of the chancellor's speech focused on global issues, such as the sluggish progress in climate protection efforts and World Trade Organization talks. But then she got around to Europe, praising the reforms made so far in the crisis-stricken countries. She also urged more European integration. Without it, she said, "we will remain an interesting holiday destination for a long time, but we won't be able to produce prosperity for the people in Europe anymore."

When she turned to Germany, Merkel insisted that the country was prepared to do what it takes to save the euro, but the comments that followed showed she wasn't ready to get overly ambitious on that front. "Germany is thought to be especially strong," she said, adding that this is not entirely wrong. But when Germany makes a promise "that through tough attacks on the market is also not redeemable, then Europe has a totally open flank."

The comment echoed another she made in an interview she gave on Wednesday to six European newspapers, including German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, when she warned about placing too many financial burdens on Germany. "Amid all the billions in aid and rescue funds, we Germans also must watch that we do not lose our strength in the end - because our possibilities are not endless either, and that would not help Europe as a whole," Merkel added. "We show solidarity, but must not forget (countries') own initiative."

"In the past two weeks, security forces have reportedly arrested four journalists," the US State Department said in a statement, "including Shahram Manouchehri, Sahamedin Bourghani, Parastoo Dokouhaki, and Marzieh Rasouli, and Iranian courts confirmed death sentences for bloggers Saeed Malekpour and Vahid Asghari, both of whom were not accorded due process and now face imminent execution on charges of 'spreading corruption.'"

The State Department faulted Iran for trying "to extinguish all forms of free expression and limit its citizens' access to information in the lead-up to March parliamentary elections."

The list of countries with which China has such deals is slowly and steadily lengthening and this is the first such deal with a Gulf Cooperation Council [GCC] state. The deal with the UAE is worth $5.5 billion — bilateral trade was $36 billion last year with Chinese exports accounting for two-thirds — and aims at “strengthening bilateral financial cooperation, promoting trade and investments and jointly safeguarding regional financial stability”, according to the Chinese central bank. China is, in essence, providing ’seed money’ so that businessmen wouldn’t need to convert every transaction into dollars, thereby lowering the foreign exchange costs.

The cool reasoning here is practical convenience but its shadows inevitably fall on other domains. Clearly, the Middle East is being ’sensitized’ about the renminbi’s role. To be kept as reserve currency in the UAE vaults enhances renminbi’s prestige. For the UAE, keeping the mighty yuan is one of the safest things they ever did in the world of high finance, as the appreciation of the Chinese currency in value is a near-certain happening in the future.

The swap deal with the UAE has introduced a tantalizing thought to the GCC states — possibility of renminbi invoicing — that will worry the west. Currently, there may be no need to lose sleep since Beijing severely restricts the flows of its currency across its borders but China is doubtless putting the infrastructure in place for an era that is not too far off when it may begin to do away with today’s strict limits on currency flows, and Beijing may well seek the use of renminbi in international trade.

The eurozone is still struggling with a sovereign debt crisis and is trying to agree reform to its political system. But many want Germany and other nations to boost the size of their rescue fund. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) wants the eurozone to inject more cash into its rescue fund.

The IMF wants the sum available for bailouts to grow beyond €500 billion ($647 billion; £416 billion) to ensure talks between private creditors and Greece do not grind to a halt.

The reserves could be bolstered by merging the temporary European Financial Stability Fund with the permanent European Stability Mechanism, according to IMF's managing director, Christine Lagarde. The future of the world economy is high on the agenda as some of world's most powerful people gather in Davos. They meet annually in the Swiss resort to discuss the state of the world.

Moreover, if Iran goes ahead with a threat to blockade oil exports via the Straits of Hormuz in the Gulf, the IMF said the shock could be even greater. About a quarter of all oil produced globally, and some 40% of all oil exports - including those from Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia - are shipped through the Straits each year.

"A blockade of the Strait of Hormuz would constitute, and be perceived by markets to presage, sharply heightened global geopolitical tension involving a much larger and unprecedented disruption," the Fund said in a regular note to the Group of 20 leading industrialised countries. The market is already pricing in a small risk of an escalation of tensions between Iran on the one hand, and the US, Europe and Israel on the other, according to the IMF's estimates.

From now, users will simply be notified that they are being 'updated' via an announcement at the top of their home page, which users click on to activate Timeline.

As with voluntary switches to Timeline, those who are 'updated' will have just seven days to select which photos, posts and life events they want to advertise to the world.

Via the official Facebook blog, the site announced, 'Last year we introduced timeline, a new kind of profile that lets you highlight the photos, posts and life events that help you tell your story.'

'Over the next few weeks, everyone will get timeline. When you get timeline, you'll have 7 days to preview what's there now. This gives you a chance to add or hide whatever you want before anyone else sees it.'

Timeline has been criticised for showing off pictures and posts that people might have wanted to forget.

For example, if you spend an hour signed in to a Google account searching the Web for skateboards, the next time you log into YouTube, you might get recommendations for videos featuring Tony Hawk, along with ads for his merchandise and the nearest place to buy them. However, this could also apply to searches relating to sensitive topics such as meetings in your calendar. Privacy problems are particularly pertinent to those who share a Google account with other members of their family.

Cecilia Kang, of the Washington Post, described collation of vast tracts of information as a ‘massive cauldron of data.’ ‘Privacy advocates say Google's changes betray users who are not accustomed to having their information shared across different Web sites.’ she said. ‘A user of Gmail, for instance, may send messages about a private meeting with a colleague and may not want the location of that meeting to be thrown into Google's massive cauldron of data or used for Google's maps application.’

Technology site Gizmodo said that the change was the end of Google’s ‘don’t be evil’ motto. The site’s Mat Honan wrote: ‘It means that things you could do in relative anonymity today, will be explicitly associated with your name, your face, your phone number. If you use Google's services, you have to agree to this new privacy policy. It is an explicit reversal of its previous policies.’ Larry Dignan, meanwhile, writing on ZDnet.com, described the new policy as ‘Big Brother-ish’.

He wrote: ‘Google will know more about you than your wife does. Everything across your screens will be integrated and tracked.’ Google noted that it collects information you provide, data from your usage, device information and location. Unique applications are also noted.