The system, made up of nine video cameras mounted on a remotely piloted aircraft, can transmit live images to soldiers on the ground or to analysts tracking enemy movements. It can send up to 65 different images to different users; by contrast, Air Force drones today shoot video from a single camera over a "soda straw" area the size of a building or two.

With the new tool, analysts will no longer have to guess where to point the camera, said Major General James O Poss, the Air Force's assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. "Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we're looking at, and we can see everything."

The Air Force is exponentially increasing surveillance across Afghanistan. The monthly number of unmanned and manned aircraft surveillance sorties has more than doubled since last January, and quadrupled since the beginning of 2009.

The document, dated November 15, 2009, was quoted Sunday in Norwegian by Oslo-based daily Aftenposten, which said it had obtained WikiLeaks' entire cache of 251,187 leaked US embassy cables. "The rocket threat against Israel is more serious than ever. That is why Israel is putting such emphasis on rocket defence," Ashkenazi told the US delegation led by Democrat Ike Skelton, the cable showed.

The army chief lamented that Iran has some 300 Shihab rockets that can reach Israel and stressed that the Jewish state would have only between 10 and 12 minutes warning in case of an attack. However, it was Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon that posed the most acute threat, he cautioned. According to the quoted cable, Hezbollah is thought to have more than 40,000 rockets, many of which are believed capable of reaching deep into Israel.

US officials meanwhile reportedly estimate the militant group has acquired an arsenal of around 50,000 rockets. And in his comments made nearly a year after Israel on December 27, 2008 launched the deadly Gaza war, Ashkenazi said "Israel is on a collision course also with Hamas, which rules Gaza. Hamas will have the possibility to bombard Tel Aviv, with Israel's highest population concentration," he was quoted as saying.

"When you hand out $1 trillion in TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) just before this president came in, most of it unspent, $1 trillion nearly in stimulus, that this president asked for, plus this huge expansion in health care and government, it has a corrupting effect," Issa said on CNN's "State of the Union."

Although TARP - the program passed in 2008 intended to strengthen the financial sector by purchasing assets from financial institutions - was passed by Congress under the Bush administration, Issa said the unregulated funds were used by Obama like "presidential earmarks."

But the California Republican also admitted Congress shares some of the blame.

"All of that would not have been possible if Congress had done its job," Issa told CNN Chief White House Correspondent Ed Henry. "Instead what happened was we gave President Bush (the money and) President Obama inherited $800 billion worth of walking-around money with no guidelines."

And a woman seriously hurt on Friday near the south-east Missouri town of Rolla died in hospital on Saturday. Several other people in Arkansas and Missouri were injured. The tornado in Cincinnati caused damage near a local highway in the town's centre and points west of Washington County in Arkansas, county dispatcher Josh Howerton said, adding that there were "lots of injuries".

"It sucked me out of my house and carried me across the road and dropped me," Chris Sizemore, a resident of Cincinnati, told the Associated Press news agency. The tornado hit the town, located about 20 miles (32km) west of the city of Fayetteville, around 0610 local time (1210GMT) on Friday, said Joe Sellers, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oklahoma.

Emergency responders were experiencing difficulties early on Friday in reaching damaged areas in the region because of power lines that had been knocked down, Rick Johnson, the deputy emergency manager for Washington County, said. The Arkansas Department of Emergency Management said that power was out throughout Washington County. A local airport cancelled flights due to debris on its runway in Benton County, a region near the Arkansas state lines with Oklahoma and Missouri, Matt Garrity, the county's manager of emergency services, told the CNN news network.

Authorities have now confirmed three deaths caused by flood waters in the past few days. Officials have said that the crisis could last another month. "Given the scale and size of this disaster and the prospect that we'll see waters sitting for potentially a couple of weeks," said Queensland Premier Anna Bligh. "We will continue to have major issues to deal with throughout January."

Rockhampton has already been badly hit, with many people being forced to flee. Rockhampton's airport, a major regional hub, was closed to commercial traffic due to flooded runways, while many main roads and railways into the town have been cut off, and power supplies disrupted.

"Today we'll see resupply of Rockhampton by military aircraft taking supplies into Mackay and then road transporting them down to Rockhampton," the state's emergency coordinator, police Deputy Commissioner Ian Stewart, said on Monday. "That will continue until such time as the road is cut." Flood waters are expected to reach nine metres (30 feet) on Monday and peak at 9.4 metres on Wednesday, threatening as many as 4,000 homes.

Hundreds of people in coastal areas fled to higher ground for fear of a tsunami, but no alert was issued. An 8.8-magnitude quake in the same area last February caused huge destruction. Chile's national emergency agency (Onemi) said there was no danger of a tsunami. "Up until now we don't have any reports of injuries, there's no damage, just overloaded telephone lines and some partial power cuts," said Onemi's director, Vicente Nunez.

"We've told people to go back to their houses because there's no tsunami alert." The quake hit at 1720 (2020 GMT) and was centred about 600 kilometres (370 miles) southwest of the capital, Santiago. Chile is still rebuilding after February's massive quake, which smashed infrastructure and triggered a tsunami that devastated several coastal towns, killing more than 400 people.

One major risk facing the world economy at the moment is related to a slow transition of economic power from the West to the East. The rise of the emerging world, in particular China, and the coinciding weakening of the West, in particular the US, has resulted in a "collapse of consensus of how the global monetary system should be run", Mr Ward continues.

In simple terms, China favours tight controls of the economy whereas the US prefers free market solutions, "hence the volatility here", he says. The tension has resulted in a currency war, where major economies seek to devalue their own currency in order to boost their own competitiveness; China through central controls, the US by way of "printing money on a scale we've never seen before".

In turn, this has made life tough for small countries, which have responded by introducing capital controls. Add a high risk of deflation in the US, which could result in more quantitative easing (essentially printing money) and thus more pressure towards currency wars and capital controls, and there are reasons to be concerned about whether the world economy can cope, Mr Ward reasons.

"The European crisis is yet another source of concern for us," Mr Ward agrees. "Spain is the really big one, and it is really sick as well," he says. "If Spain wobbles and collapses, it'll be very bad news for everyone, not just in Europe but all over the world," reasoning that it could result in the collapse of the euro. "If the euro did collapse, it would make Lehman Brothers look like a tea party.

Banks alone must refinance about 400 billion euros (343 billion pounds) of debt in the first half of the year, but add in the more than 500 billion euros European governments must replace over the same period, as well as further hundreds of billions of euros of mortgage-backed debt maturing and there is the potential for chaos in the credit markets.

"What we are looking at here clearly has the potential to become a second credit crunch. However, this time it would be much worse than before," said Celestino Amore, founder of IlliquidX, which specialises in trading hard-to-price debt. "Governments have been able to slow down the process, but the problems did not go away. There remains trillions of dollars of debt that must be refinanced or sold."

Mr Amore predicts a rush to sell assets, much like that which kicked off the first credit crunch in the summer of 2007. However, many fund managers and other large institutional investors are looking to reduce their exposure to bonds, leading to warnings that there will not be enough demand to buy all the debt banks and governments will need to sell.

Last week the Centre for Economic and Business Research said a new eurozone crisis was its top prediction for 2011, pointing out that Spain and Italy alone must refinance more than 400 million euros of bonds in the spring. "I think you're going to see everyone rush to sell bonds very early in January, because no one wants to take the chance of missing whatever funding window is available," said the banker.

* AB 119 prevents insurance companies from charging different rates for men and women for identical coverage.

* SB 782 prevents landlords from evicting tenants who are victims of domestic or sexual abuse or stalking.

* AB 1844 informally known as 'Chelsea's Law' and authored by local Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher - will increase penalties, parole provisions and oversight of sex offenders, including a "one-strike, life-without-parole penalty" for some.

* AB 1871 allows people to lease out their cars when they are not being used - alleviating the need to purchase additional insurance.

And so the list goes on and on... California now has over 57,000 laws on the books.

North Korea's holiday message - scrutinized by officials and analysts in neighboring countries for policy clues - comes after its November 23 artillery attack on a front-line South Korean island near the countries' disputed western sea border, the first attack on a civilian area since the 1950-53 Korean War.

That barrage, which followed an alleged North Korean torpedoing of a South Korean warship in March, sent tensions between the Koreas soaring and fueled fears of war during the last weeks of 2010. Also Saturday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon vowed to help improve tense relations between South and North Korea. Ban spoke with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak by telephone and said the world body would closely consult with Seoul, Lee's office said in a statement posted on its Web site.

Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister, made the pledge as Lee called for the UN's cooperation in improving ties between South and North Korea. Lee called the 2011 as an "important year for the South-North relations," Lee's office said, without elaborating. The Korean peninsula remains technically in a state of war because the 1950s conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

"The danger of war should be removed and peace safeguarded in the Korean peninsula," said the message, which was also read by a North Korean anchorwoman, wearing traditional Korean dress, in a state television broadcast monitored in Seoul. "If a war breaks out on this land, it will bring nothing but a nuclear holocaust."

The switch from Estonia's old currency, the kroon, comes after a dreadful year for the eurozone economies which saw two members - Greece and Ireland - require emergency bailouts, with other nations on the precipice. Many feel that the inclusion of Estonia, whose $19 billion economy is dwarfed by the euro's total annual output of approximately $12.5 trillion, holds symbolic importance.

Germany's deputy foreign minister Werner Hoyer said: 'Estonia's accession to the eurozone is an encouraging sign for Europe as a whole because it shows the attractiveness of our common currency.' But Estonia could be the last new entrant for several years as fears about the strength of the single currency deter others.

State Treasurer Andrew Fraser said that on top of recovery costs, the state would receive less income because of damage to the mining sector. There are concerns that damage could cost billions of Australian dollars to repair.

"In many ways, it is a disaster of biblical proportions," he told journalists in the flood-hit town of Bundaberg. "The cost to the state will be huge - both in direct costs such as rebuilding roads, and other damaged infrastructure and providing relief payments to families - but also in lost income, while the mining, agriculture and tourism sectors recover," he said.

The floods have affected about 200,000, thousands of whom have been evacuated. An estimated 22 towns have been left isolated or inundated by the rising waters over an area larger than France and Germany. In some areas the waters have been receding, but around Rockhampton they are still rising. Rockhampton Mayor Brad Carter said about 40% of the city could be affected when the Fitzroy River reaches its expected peak next week.

After the explosion, angry Christians clashed with police and local Muslims, reportedly throwing stones and targeting a nearby mosque. Protesters went into the mosque, throwing books out onto the street, the Associated Press news agency reported. The mayor of Alexandria, General Adel Labib, said on Egyptian TV that there had been recent threats of attacks on churches, though he tried to play down any possible sectarian motive for Saturday's bombing.

Christians from the Coptic Orthodox Church make up about 10% of Egypt's predominantly Muslim population. The rise of political Islam and the failure of the government to address Coptic claims of discrimination have fuelled divisions, analysts say. Al-Qaeda in Iraq has also been conducting a campaign against Christians, following the reported conversion to Islam by two Egyptian Christian women in order to divorce their husbands. The group said the women were being held against their will by the Coptic Church.

Alexandria, Egypt's second-largest city with a population of about four million, has seen sectarian violence in the past.

Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast)

Cote d'Ivoire is on the brink of what may be a very bad 2011. After a five-year delay, Cote d'Ivoire held presidential elections on October 31. A peaceful first round of voting was commended by the international community, but the runoff between incumbent Laurent Gbagbo and former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara was marred by clashes and allegations of fraud on both sides. It's very possible that Cote d'Ivoire will take a turn for the worse in 2011. Gbagbo and Ouattara both have heavily armed supporters who seem ready to fight for the long haul.

Colombia

Despite a series of strategic losses in recent years - from territory to key leadership - the country's leftist guerrillas, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), still maintain about 8,000 armed troops and perhaps twice that number of supporters. The rebels killed some 30 police in the weeks after Santos's inauguration, clearly to make a point. Meanwhile, new illegal armed groups have sprung up to capture the drug trafficking market, their ranks filled with former paramilitary fighters. If these new armed groups are not contained, Colombia stands to regress in its long fight to finally root out the drug trade - and the militancy it fuels.

Zimbabwe

Keep an eye on Zimbabwe in 2011 as the country's "unity" government - joining longtime President Robert Mugabe with opposition leader Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai - will warrant its conciliatory name less and less by the day. The flashpoint? Elections. Both men want to hold them - but they don't agree about what Zimbabweans should be voting on.

Iraq

Iraq today is in far better shape than it was in 2007, when nearly two dozen Iraqis were dying each day in suicide bombings. But it's still far from out of the woods. And these days, it's not militants but the country's politics that pose the biggest threat. The new government, formed in December after nine months of wrangling, is weak and lacks the institutions to rule effectively. Iraq's neighbors could exploit the country's ongoing political turmoil to gain influence and sway, particularly Iran, which has long supported Shiite militants. Insurgents also await an opportunity to capitalize on political discord. At the same time, US troops will be largely - if not entirely - withdrawn by the end of next year. And lacking that safety net, it would take very little for the country to lapse back into conflict.

Venezuela

Over the next 12 months, watch for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to take his brand of 21st-century socialism to the extremes. Having lost his majority in Parliament in September, Chavez has since been working hard to ensure that the new, opposition legislature will be irrelevant by the time it is sworn in in January. The Venezuelan president has consolidated control over the military and police, seized more private companies, and won temporary "decree powers" from the outgoing, pro-government National Assembly. Government-allied street gangs in Caracas stand ready to defend his revolution with Kalashnikovs.

Sudan

The fate of Sudan in 2011 will be set early, on January 9, when a referendum on southern self-determination is scheduled to take place, and which will likely result in independence for the south.

Should the vote go poorly, we might witness the re-ignition of conflict between north and south and an escalation of violence in Darfur, all of which could potentially draw in regional states. At this point, nothing is certain.

Finally, there's the tricky matter of creating a new, independent Southern Sudan, which many are already dubbing a pre-failed state. The border remains undecided - no small matter since the contested middle ground happens to sit on a large oil field.

Mexico

It has been four years since Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared war on the country's drug lords. During that time, 30,000 people have fallen victim to the conflict, many of them along the northern border with the United States, largely as a result of in-fighting among rival gangs vying for control of trafficking corridors.

America remains the largest market for drugs in the world, and so long as US users demand product, the cartels will keep the supply flowing.

Guatemala

Mexico's drug war is also sending shockwaves throughout Latin America. Under pressure from the Mexican state, the most infamous cartels are seeking friendlier ground and finding it in Guatemala, where the state is weak and the institutions are fragile. In the worst case scenario for 2011, Guatemala could be host to a perpetual turf war of attrition between these various cartels, all competing to control drug trafficking routes - and increasingly human-trafficking corridors - to the United States.

Haiti

Nature had it in for Haiti in 2010, but it may be politics that batters the small island country in the coming year. A November 28 presidential election, which should have led to the election of a new, legitimate government, remains wedged in an impasse over allegations of fraud. Already, Haiti was on the verge of a social breakdown. Today, more than 1 million Haitians remain homeless in the ruined capital. The government, whose ranks and infrastructure were devastated by the earthquake, has no capacity to deliver services or provide security. The run-off election will mark a year since the earthquake, with little improvement in the everyday lives of Haitians, whose patience is running out.

Tajikistan

Tajikistan, a land of striking beauty, grinding poverty, and rapacious leaders, could well become the next stomping ground for guerrillas - Central Asians and other Muslims from the former Soviet Union - who have been fighting alongside the Taliban for years and may now be thinking of returning home to settle scores with the region's brutal and corrupt leaders.

There is rising concern in Washington that Tajikistan will become the new theater of operations for Islamic militants, and might offer a convenient route for insurgent penetration of other volatile or vulnerable parts of Central Asia - first off, Tajikistan's desperately weak neighbor, Kyrgyzstan. In the coming year, it's easy to imagine Tajikistan sliding further and further toward a failed state as the government quietly cedes control of whole sections of the country to militants.

Pakistan

It's hard to remember a time when Pakistan didn't seem on the brink of collapse. This coming year will likely be no exception. The country faces a humanitarian crisis in its mid-section where floods displaced 10 million people, a security threat from terrorist groups operating on Pakistani soil, and political instability from a weak administration still trying to wield civilian control over the all-powerful military. Meanwhile in Islamabad, the civilian leadership under President Asif Ali Zardari has grown unpopular and weak, plagued by corruption and an inability to maintain control of the military leaders.

Somalia

If Somalia keeps heading south in 2011, the entire country could fall under Islamist insurgent control. Up to now, the country's UN-backed transitional government has withstood attacks from Islamist insurgents only thanks to protection from an African Union peacekeeping force; it remains weak and divided, a national government in name alone. Further, the capital city of Mogadishu is under perpetual siege by militants, a reality that has sent millions fleeing from their homes in this year alone.

Lebanon

Still smarting from a war with Israel in 2006 that left a precarious balance of power between Christians and Islamic fundamentalists, Lebanon today is arguably more than ever on the brink. Beneath the surface, tensions are mounting with no obvious safety valve. The deterrence regime has helped keep the peace, but the process it perpetuates - mutually reinforcing military preparations, Hezbollah's growing and more sophisticated arsenal, escalating Israeli threats - pulls in the opposite direction and could trigger the very result it has averted so far.

Nigeria

Nigeria's 2010 was about as rough as they come: The country's president disappeared on medical leave - and then died - hundreds were killed in sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians in the country's middle belt, and a rebel amnesty in the oil-producing Niger Delta region completely unravelled, leading to a string of bombing attacks and kidnappings.

The rebellion in the Niger Delta is flaring up again, with militants promising to continue attacking oil facilities and government offices. A once effective anti-corruption commission has lost its momentum. And vast economic inequality is the order of the day, leaving oil wealth in the hands of a few while the majority of the country's 140 million people languish.

Guinea

Guinea enters 2011 on a hopeful path. In December, the West African country inaugurated its first-ever elected leader, Alpha Conde. After decades of strongman rule, followed by a 2009 coup, this new leadership seems nothing less than miraculous. But Guinea's military now has a strong stake in controlling mineral wealth - the country is the world's largest producer of bauxite - and other major industries. In the past, it has used strong-arm tactics to get its way, economically and otherwise, and this old habit will surely die hard. Having tasted the fruits of power under the junta, the military may not so easily return to its barracks.

Democratic Republic of the Congo

Years after the official end of the Second Congo War, which raged from 1998 to 2003 and was responsible for up to 4.5 million deaths, whole swathes of the enormous Central African country remain in upheaval. In the eastern Kivu provinces, an undisciplined national army battles with rebel groups for territorial control. Amid the frenzy of violence and rape that follows in their path, the world's largest UN peacekeeping force is at a loss to protect even those civilians that live close to its bases.

Lurking behind the conflict is Congo's vast natural wealth. Government, militants, private corporations, and local citizens all angle to tap the gold, cobalt, copper, coltan and host of other minerals under the country's soil - which are focused in the east and south of the country. Meanwhile, the central government lies nearly 1,000 miles to the west, separated from its eastern provinces by impenetrable jungle, a different language, and ethnicity. Rebel groups still roam the eastern border regions, exercising their authority with impunity and cruelty. Neither the government nor rebel groups have the strength to win, but both have the resources to keep fighting indefinitely.

Three former bishops were among those confirmed at the service, which saw the first wave of Anglicans defecting to Rome to join the Ordinariate. The Pope introduced the structure in 2009 to welcome disillusioned Anglicans into the Catholic fold after secret meetings were held at the Vatican with Church of England bishops, as The Sunday Telegraph revealed a year earlier.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, admitted the move had put him in "an awkward position", but more recently he said he respected the decisions of those who decided to leave. While around 50 clergy are expected to defect to the Catholic Church over the coming months, it has been predicted that thousands of traditionalist worshippers will join the exodus, particularly if they are given no concessions once women are made bishops.

In the next few weeks, the next groups of clergy and worshippers are set to be received into the Catholic Church, which is due to announce the precise timetable for the launch of the Ordinariate this month. The confirmations at yesterday's service were the first step to its establishment in this country. All of the clergy who have resigned from the Church of England now have to be re-ordained as the Catholic Church does not recognise Anglican orders.