He writes, "What a strange thing, this two-headed presidency!" He continues, "Put ourselves in the place of European citizens, who were sold the idea that the Lisbon Treaty would simplify things... The idea was that this simplification would make Europe more dynamic and more efficient. And yet, in this New Year, one feels a rush of vertigo: nobody had really realised that the rotating presidency would continue."

"Now we realise that Europe will be run by a complex mechanism with at least four axes: the president and the European foreign minister; the country holding the rotating presidency; the president of the Commission and his team and finally the national heads of state and government."

The Economist's Charlemagne blog argues that the potential for this problem has been obvious since the Lisbon Treaty negotiations started, and writes: "Did none of them read the Lisbon Treaty?"

"Staggering numbers of Americans are still unemployed and nearly a quarter of all homeowners owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. Forget the false hope of modestly improving monthly job numbers. The real story right now is the entrenched suffering (with no end in sight) that has been inflicted on scores of millions of working Americans by the Great Recession and the misguided economic policies that preceded it."

"As The Washington Post reported over the weekend, the entire past decade 'was the worst for the US economy in modern times.' There was no net job creation - none - between December 1999 and now. None! One in eight Americans, and one in four children, are on food stamps. Some six million Americans, according to an article in The Times on Sunday, have said that food stamps were their only income."

"If America can't change, then the current state of decline is bound to continue. You can't have a healthy economy with so many millions of people out of work, and there is no plan now that would result in the creation of millions of new jobs any time soon. Now we're escalating in Afghanistan, falling back into panic mode over an attempted act of terror and squandering a golden opportunity to build a better society."

"Nobody is on the same page. Larry Summers says the economy is growing. Christina Romer says it is not. Janet Napolitano claims the TSA/Intel system worked flawlessly, then says it failed completely. What we need in the Oval Office is a leader, and we are getting everything but. Even his ardent supporters are turning against Mr Obama. They are waking up to the sobering reality that they were duped."

"Iran is coming apart at the seams and is pursuing nuclear weapons. Seven CIA operatives and five Canadians lie dead in Afghanistan. Terrorists are plotting to take down our airplanes. The economy is hanging by a thread. Americans are concerned with the forced health-care bill. Isn't it about time the president returns the nine iron to the bag, hangs up the surfboard, puts down the Mai Tai and focuses on leading the nation at a time where leadership is our only hope?"

"The only upside to this presidency will be the exposure of the true nature of liberalism, which, to quote Michael Savage, is a "mental disorder." If you think George Bush ruined the Republican Party, just wait until you see what Mr Obama does to the Democratic Party. The 2010 election is going to be a bloodbath."

The newspaper has seen the party's draft EU policy programme which reads: "not every problem in Europe is a problem for Europe. All problems which can be solved by the member states should be solved there." The policy paper also rejects a unified European social policy and the extension of EU discrimination regulations. In justice and home affairs, it argues that national policies must be given priority, warning that the European Commission should "not put into question national best practices".

The document also warns the European Commission against pursuing the introduction of an EU-wide tax and states that, even if the Lisbon Treaty gives the EU new competences, "no additional resources should be made available", arguing that increased spending should be financed by savings elsewhere. The text also calls for the EU to end its enlargement negotiations with Turkey.

The year beginning today is also expected to bring forward causes that the German Pope has made a priority: advances in Christian unity, and unity with other religions, particularly Islam and Judaism. In fact, one of the most symbolic events of the year will be his January 17 visit to the Synagogue of Rome. The synod on Africa in Rome and the Pope's first trip to the continent as Pontiff marked 2009. In this regard, 2010 will be a year in the light of the Middle East, given that the synod to discuss that region is scheduled for October 10-24.

The Pope will officially present the working document for the synod during his visit to Cyprus from June 4 to 6. That trip is symbolic for other reasons because it will bring to light certain central themes of the pontificate, such as dialogue with the local Orthodox Church. That Church, since the 2006 election of Chrysostomos II, has become a leader in ecumenical efforts, as well as a promoter of interreligious dialogue with Islam, due to Turkish presence on the divided island.

Though the dates have not been officially announced, it is expected that he will be in England between the 17th and 19th of September. While there, it is expected that the Pontiff will beatify Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890), an intellectual Anglican convert. That visit will obviously have decisive ecumenical repercussions in light of last year's October 20 announcement that paves the way for Anglicans to come to full communion with the Holy See in groups.

Mexico's 1910 centennial, after all, saw the start of the bloody, decade-long Mexican Revolution, which killed more than a million people. And that cataclysm was precisely a century after the start of Mexico's bloody, decade-long War of Independence in 1810.

You get the picture. As a result, there's been no shortage of talk lately about possible unrest, especially in the form of armed rebel groups, erupting south of the border in 2010.

But is there really a basis for concern? None as apparent as the popular grievances that existed in 1809 or 1909. But this is still Mexico; and while Spanish colonizers no longer oppress the country, and dictators like Porfirio Diaz aren't brutalizing campesinos, the country nonetheless is reeling from the worst criminal violence in its history and one of its hardest economic slumps.

"We are very near a social crisis," Jose Narro, the director of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City, said recently. "The conditions are there."

It is Europe's dirty secret that the list of nuclear-capable countries extends beyond those that have built their own weapons - Britain, France and Russia. The truth is that Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands store nuclear bombs on their air-force bases and have planes capable of delivering them.

There are an estimated 200 B-61 thermonuclear-gravity bombs scattered across these four countries. Under a NATO agreement struck during the Cold War, the bombs, which are owned by the US, can be transferred to the control of a host nation's air force in time of conflict. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Dutch, Belgian, Italian and German pilots remain ready to engage in nuclear war.

But the financial crisis was more than just a bad dream. The damage it did has been quite real and widespread, even though this may not be immediately apparent. We should not forget what extreme measures had to be taken to avert disaster. The financial sector is still being propped up with hundreds of millions of euros and dollars in loans, and it still has a lot of bad loans and assets on its books that will need to be written off.

Governments have let their deficits soar, and most have taken active measures to stimulate their economies. Central banks have lowered interest rates to percentages varying between 0 and 1, and have left the financial sector awash with cash in an attempt to defrost the world's frozen money markets.

Almost all of these measures were absolutely necessary, if only because the alternatives were too horrible to contemplate. But they have left the world economy running on economic and monetary steroids on the eve of 2010. The current upturn was largely caused by these extreme measures, and if they were to be rescinded, it is doubtful recovery would continue.

The display of international unity in the face of the current crisis might seem exemplary, but was largely a chance occurrence. Each country simply tended to its domestic issues, creating the illusion of coordination. Only now that measures need to be rescinded will international economic cooperation face its true test.

And if the military aim is to "degrade" the Taliban, the fight will be waged mostly in the south of Afghanistan and on its eastern borders with Pakistan, the insurgency's Pashtun heartland. Should the Taliban guerrillas merely cross to the Pakistani side of the boundary, Islamabad will be asked to act as backstop, preventing the Taliban from regrouping, and apprehending or smashing them instead. As envisioned in comments to Congress by General David Petraeus, head of the US military's Central Command, or CENTCOM, the Pakistani army and security services will be "a catcher's mitt, or an anvil, whatever it may be" to the American pitcher or hammer.

Pakistan, however, is loath to play either role. The country's military establishment opposes Obama's "surge" in Afghanistan, fearing that it will indeed push Taliban fighters across the border, where their presence will compound a Pakistan Taliban insurgency that already mires 200,000 Pakistani soldiers along the Afghan frontier. Pakistan's beleaguered civilian government does not want US troops to "begin to come home" in July 2011, as Obama said they will.

However slow the "drawdown", the government knows that with the US departure from Afghanistan goes Pakistan's special status as a frontline state and the largesse that comes with it. And the Pakistani people, reflexively, oppose both the surge and the exit. While the wisest among them accept that Pakistan is facing a homegrown Islamist rebellion in the tribal areas and Northwest Frontier Province, most know that the historical cause of their war is the US and Pakistani military's woeful 30-year entanglement with Afghanistan. They worry that Obama's move will push the war eastward.

Where people, government and army agree is in the perception that Obama's late-inning pitch at the Taliban is an admission of US defeat.

The Lisbon Treaty expands the EU's law-making powers and correspondingly restricts the power of the UK Parliament to make law. So the UK Parliament, while under the transient majority control of one party, has apparently permanently restricted the law-making power of future Parliaments, by ratifying the Lisbon Treaty. This restriction on the future law-making power of Parliament has no political legitimacy because it was never put to the British people for their approval.

This is why the UK now needs a bill which will write formally into law the rule that Parliament is sovereign and that it can, if it so chooses, over-ride any laws of external origin including those originating from the EU. It would of course be a potentially a grave matter to breach an international treaty, and such a step might have serious repercussions for the UK's trade relationships. Therefore I would only expect Parliament to exercise that power in the most exceptional circumstances, or as a purely defensive measure to prevent unwarranted and over-extensive interpretations of their powers by EU institutions.

The bill would put the UK in a similar position to other countries which already have written constitutions defining the powers of the state. Most notably, the German Federal Constitutional Court has twice emphatically ruled that the powers of the EU within Germany are ultimately limited by the terms of the German constitution (basic law) as interpreted by Germany's own constitutional court.

The really bad news for the people so desperate to pass the Treaty is that since it is now in force, there will be countless new examples of just how out of touch and undemocratic the EU has become. As the EU flexes its new muscles, millions of people across Europe will gradually realise they have less and less say over the issues which affect their lives, and their scepticism and frustration will only grow.

Because make no mistake, the loss of powers to the EU does not end with the Lisbon Treaty. On the contrary, federalist leaders think they've been given a green light to go full steam ahead to political union.

Take the agenda of the upcoming 'trio' of EU 'presidencies', beginning with Spain in January 2010. It says: "The task ahead of us is to build a more united and a more integrated Europe." The Socialist Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Zapatero, says: "Europe has been and continues to be a successful project... but we are not satisfied; we want more. We want to build a stronger Europe, more united."

It is now more important than ever that the next British government prioritises radical reform. EU social policy is going to cost the UK 71 billion pounds over the next decade as it is, even without the additional new laws Zapatero has up his sleeve. Debt-ridden Britain simply can't afford it.

With Afghanistan absorbing an increasing amount of resources, the Navy's surface warship and submarine fleets look set to be the most vulnerable.

Steve Bush, the editor of the guide, warns that even though the Navy is to receive two large aircraft carriers and more of the new Type 45 destroyers, there will not be enough frigates and destroyers to protect the most important ships. Mr Bush, who left the Royal Navy in 2000 after 20 years, told The Times: "There are new ships coming through but the fleet has been pared back so much by the Government that there are now not enough escort ships to protect the bigger vessels."

"The Government thinks that new ships are more capable and therefore you don't need so many of them, but the number of escort ships is being cut significantly. If you're going to rely on new carriers and an amphibious capability... you need escort ships to keep them safe. The Government is concentrating on the big ships but neglecting the smaller ships." Even the Government's commitment to the two new 64,000-tonne carriers, costing about 4 billion pounds, might not survive the demand for savings. "With a defence review due this year, nothing will be exempt from the need to cut costs," Mr Bush writes in the guide.

CHINA: Snow storms today have caused chaos in China's capital of Beijing, grinding aeroplanes to a halt and causing severe traffic delays.

Around 90 per cent of all flights were either delayed or cancelled, leaving thousands of passengers stranded. The snow shows no sign of stopping, however, and temperatures are expected to drop to -16C in Beijing on Monday and Tuesday, causing more problems for those attempting to returning to work after a three-day New Year holiday.

INDIA: Not a country usually associated with snow, India has experienced severe problems since Saturday when snowfall and a dense blanket of fog began to cause chaos. Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir were all hit with heavy snow, while Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana and Delhi also recorded snowfall over the past 24 hours.

RUSSIA: A country much more used to dealing with high levels of snow, Russia saw temperature lows of a chilling -20C in Moscow today.

GERMANY: The snow caused more problems with flights in Germany, with one jet veering off the runway at Dortmund airport in western Germany.

AUSTRIA: While they are much more accustomed to dealing with snow, even native Austrians were struggling to cope with the freezing lows of -8C at night and -3C during the day.

"The past 17 years have proven without a shadow of a doubt that every square inch ceded by Israel to the Palestinians was transformed into a platform of hatred and terrorism," RCP Director Rabbi Avrohom Shmuel Lewin told the ambassador. "In other words, the 'land for peace' formula in the Israel-Palestinian context, besides being a formula that goes against the Divine will, is ineffective, obsolete, and an exercise in futility. Most of all it is a dangerous policy that only leads to bloodshed and instability in the region and harms vital American interests in the region as well," Lewin said.

Rabbi Sholom Gold, a leading rabbi in Jerusalem said, "It's all a play of words, there is no peace process," he said. "From the day that we started conceding and withdrawing we did not have one day of rest and peace. Why should our enemies want to make peace with us when they see that with terrorism they get what they want? Even the US, Israel's supposedly best friend, sides with them in demanding a freeze and evacuation of settlements. Is the triumph of Arab terror one of America's interests?" Gold asked.

Rabbi Dov Lior, the Rabbi of Kiryat Arba-Hevron, said: "G-d gave the US the power and influence to affect the rest of the world and supporting Israel is the key to America's success." Ambassador Cunningham told the rabbis that he does not see how the problem can be solved "without taking into consideration the Palestinians," to which Rabbi Gold remarked: "Ever since we started taking the Palestinians into consideration the situation only worsened."

Barack Obama has sent his top Middle East general to meet Yemen's president. The US president has alleged that the Christmas Day bomb suspect was trained by a Yemen-based al-Qaeda offshoot. General David Petraeus - who is responsible for US Middle East and Central Asian operations - reportedly said the US was keen to support Yemen's fight against al-Qaeda.

On Saturday, Mr Obama for the first time publicly accused an offshoot of al-Qaeda, based in Yemen, over the alleged attempt by Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up an airliner over Detroit. A statement from No 10 said Downing Street and White House officials had discussed "increased UK-US working" in a series of phone calls since the alleged failed plot on Christmas Day.

Mr Brown has called Yemen "both an incubator and potential safe haven for terrorism" and said it presented "a regional and global threat". The UK is one of Yemen's leading donors and is already helping to train counter-terrorism officials in the country.