SOUTH KOREA - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has such a low profile on the world stage that he's referred to as "the invisible man". Perhaps in an effort to boost his press coverage he's given a speech in Incheon, South Korea, that can only be described as a bizarre PR stunt, with the sort of cataclysmic environmental statements doled out in scientifically dodgy disaster movies.
INDIA - Parts of India are on track for severe water shortages according to results from Nasa's gravity satellites. The Grace mission discovered that in the country's northwest - including Delhi - the water table is falling by about 4cm (1.6 inches) per year.
JAPAN - The financial services industry, hammered by job cuts and record losses, is in for an even bigger contraction as the global recession deepens, said Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report.
WASHINGTON, USA - The federal deficit climbed higher into record territory in July, hitting $1.27 trillion with two months remaining in the budget year. The Treasury Department said Wednesday that the July deficit totaled $180.7 billion, slightly more than the $177.5 billion economists had expected.
IRAN - In the wake of a bogus election, the deadly harassment of protestors and squabbling among hardliners, everything seems to have changed in Tehran. Two men could now pose a serious threat to the regime: Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri and multimillionaire Hashemi Rafsanjani.
USA - I'm not going to make the case that America under Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress has become a totalitarian police state. But, I will make the case that Washington is leading us in that direction.
USA - A newly released study from the Home School Legal Defense Association shows that not only do homeschoolers incur expenses of only 5 percent that public schools spend on each student, they score nearly 40 points higher on standardized achievement tests. Costs also average $500, compared to $10,000 at public school
UK - Returning to Britain from a summer holiday abroad, you begin to notice things that perhaps escaped your attention before - the huge number of CCTV cameras that infest our public spaces and, much less obviously, the atmosphere of watchfulness and control that has now become a way of life.
UK - Banks are punishing borrowers with some of the highest lending rates on record, official figures show. The cost of overdrafts and loans has soared even though the official base rate stands at a mere 0.5 per cent.
UK - An international maritime search was under way for the Maltese-registered Arctic Sea and its 15-strong Russian crew. They have not been heard from since communicating with British Coastguards as it prepared to enter the Strait of Dover from the North Sea at 1.52pm on July 28.
BEIJING, CHINA - China's military launched war games Tuesday aimed at deploying forces at long distances, reflecting moves to ensure security in the restive western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang.
WASHINGTON, USA - Militia groups with gripes against the government are regrouping across the country and could grow rapidly, according to an organization that tracks such trends.
NIGERIA - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has arrived in Nigeria on the fifth leg of her seven-nation tour of Africa. During her 36-hour visit, Mrs Clinton will meet her Nigerian counterpart, Ojo Maduekwe, and later hold talks with President Umaru Yar'Adua.
UK - The Times reports that Government Ministers are pressing the European Commission to speed up approval of genetically modified (GM) crop varieties or risk a collapse in the £6.8 billion a year market for home-produced chicken, eggs, pork and milk.
UK - The authorities made more than 500,000 requests for confidential communications data last year, equivalent to spying on one in every 78 adults, leading to claims that Britain had "sleepwalked into a surveillance society".