America, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea resumed talks with North Korea in Beijing after a gap of more than a year. The discussions are intended to bring an end to its nuclear-weapons programme—North Korea carried out a nuclear test in October.
All the senior economic officials in George Bush's cabinet joined Hank Paulson, America's treasury secretary, in Beijing for the first meeting in a new twice-yearly “strategic economic dialogue” with China. The two sides haggled inconclusively about trade and exchange rates.
The fragility of the Democrats' hold on the incoming American Senate was thrown into sharp focus when Senator Tim Johnson, from South Dakota, suffered a brain haemorrhage. Mr Johnson is said to be recovering after surgery, but if he dies, South Dakota's Republican governor will appoint someone to fill the remainder of his term. A Republican replacement for Mr Johnson would upset the new Democratic majority of one in the chamber.
The death penalty in two states was more or less put on hold over concerns that executions by lethal injection had been botched. Florida's governor, Jeb Bush, ordered a halt to executions after a convicted killer took 34 minutes to die and a judge in California ruled that the state's method of administering the injections was cruel and therefore unconstitutional.
Two of the oldest Episcopalian parishes in the United States, with roots in the colonial era, voted to break away from the national church to protest against its growing acceptance of gays and the ordination of women. Located in Virginia, the parishes aligned themselves with a conservative Nigerian church. The debate over homosexuality and the role of women in the church threatens to produce a schism in the worldwide Anglican communion.
President Mahmoud Abbas called for a general election in the Palestinian territories, as violence between the ruling Islamists of Hamas and Mr Abbas's secular Fatah party increased in the Gaza Strip.
Supporters of Iran's populist president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, did badly in elections to local councils and to the assembly of experts. The assembly can choose Iran's supreme leader, who has more power than the president.
A Libyan court sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death after they were found guilty—on flimsy evidence—of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with AIDS.
Robert Mugabe, who has run Zimbabwe since 1980, won his ruling party's backing to postpone the next presidential election from 2008 to 2010.
Some 250 foreign aid workers left the Darfur region of Sudan after some of them were shot at and their vehicles stolen at gunpoint. The government in Khartoum continued to refuse to accept a hybrid peacekeeping force from the African Union and the UN.
Tony Blair became the first British prime minister ever to be questioned by police during a criminal investigation. He was questioned as a witness in an inquiry into alleged cash payments from party donors in return for peerages in the House of Lords. Mr Blair said it was “perfectly natural” that he should assist.
Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's former prime minister and the current centre-right opposition leader, went to America for health checks. Mr Berlusconi, who is 70, collapsed at a political rally last month.
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