Can’t explain it – but maybe its going to be a better year, a better decade than we might have expected.

Yes all the bad news is still there to be harvested. Iraq looks like getting little better, Afghanistan not much improvement there either. read more

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Woah! 30,000 people in Copenhagen especially for the UN climate change summit. 10,000 in the summit centre. 2,000 more at the gate. I’ve been to some summits, but this one takes the carbon emitting biscuit!

Rather ominously, this last group are lining up along a chain link fence as if inside a jail. Five metres above them, red lights wink on lampposts, denoting the point to which sea levels will rise by 2050 if the scientists are right and we do nothing.

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So, come the small hours this side of the Atlantic, President Obama will address the American nation and confirm his intention to more fully pursue The Bush Doctrine which began in Iraq, through Afghanistan. Bush surged into Baghdad; Obama will surge into Kabul.

Meanwhile here Gordon Brown has pre-surged, carefully timing his 500 reinforcements yesterday, apparently so as not to look too much like Obama’s poodle.

And both reinforcements of course, completely miss the point. read more

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MANAUS, BRAZIL – I’m writing this in darkness on the roof of the Palace Hotel (a misnomer!) where we are staying here in Manaus.

We are a world away from Sao Paolo – or should I say a four hour flight – yet still well inside Brazil. That gives you a sense of the size of the place.

This is the heart of the Amazon region, itself at the very heart of the Copenhagen climate change talks. They are relieved here to learn that Obama is finally going to be there if, rather curiously, in the middle of the thing rather than at what many hope will be a climactic ending. read more

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Jon Snow is not the only one in Brazil this week. While he is there exploring Brazil’s response to climate change, Middle Eastern leaders have also been flying in for some high profile visits.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – Lula to you and I – has been hosting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Brasilia this week. Lula is defending Iran’s right to develop nuclear energy for “peaceful purposes” and promises to visit Iran himself next spring.

Its part of new international push by Brazil. read more

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WASHINGTON DC, USA – Late on Saturday night the cause of reforming healthcare in America took another baby step forward.

The Senate agreed to debate the healthcare bill but it’s still far from clear whether they will eventually vote to pass it.

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I’m back in China after a year’s absence, and I note a subtle difference in the censorship.

The BBC news website is no longer blocked, but they’ve stopped Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo and other social networking and video uploading sites.

In other words, the Chinese authorities are now more worried about what their own people think, film and say than about news and views from the outside world.

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President Obama’s joint press appearance with President Hu of China today seemed to involve the American trying to say very little that might cause offence, and the Chinese leader trying to say almost nothing at all.

Neither took questions from reporters at the end of this stage-managed tour, which has been likened by some to an embarrassed debtor visiting his bank manager: China is the largest foreign holder of US government bonds and enjoys a trade surplus with the US.

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It is all about perceptions.

Today’s leaking of a memo from the US Ambassador to Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, to Washington about his concerns over sending more than 10 to 15,000 reinforcements here, is not the first leak this week.

There’s been a flurry of backhanded information coming out of Washington in the past few months.

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