The possibility that 2010 would emerge as the warmest year on record was raised by scientists after the year began with a period of El Nino conditions - unusually warm waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, which transfer heat from the ocean to the atmosphere.

However, a switch to the opposing La Nina conditions halfway through the year cast doubt on whether the record would be broken.

Although December was exceptionally cold in some places - the coldest for 100 years across the UK - other regions, such as Greenland and eastern Canada, saw unseasonably warm weather.

The WMO notes a number of extreme weather events ocurring during 2010, including:

Chinese President Hu Jintao has acknowledged that "a lot still needs to be done" in China over human rights.

Mr Hu was speaking at a rare joint news conference with US President Barack Obama on the first full day of his state visit to the US.

Asked to justify China's human rights record, Mr Hu said China had "made enormous progress recognized in the world".

Mr Obama said he saw China's "peaceful rise" as good for the United States.

"The US has an interest in seeing hundreds of millions of people lifted out of poverty," Mr Obama said.

The United States was advised to adopt a policy of "covert sabotage" of Iran's clandestine nuclear facilities, including computer hacking and "unexplained explosions", by an influential German thinktank, a leaked US embassy cable reveals.

from Crikey .....

If voters can't trust their government to give them the full story how can they trust them enough to vote them back into power?

That's the question that the Keneally government faces in light of the extraordinary events in NSW since parliament was prorogued in December, events that have been partially eclipsed by a combination of Christmas holidays and devastating floods.

And we can only presume that that's exactly what the Keneally government wants.

When it comes to criticism, sometimes the harshest but most constructive feedback comes from friends.

This month, Australia's human rights record will be reviewed on the world stage under the United Nations' Universal Periodic Review process. This is a peer review in which, every four to five years, the human rights record of each of the 192 UN member countries is reviewed by the 191 other countries.

The offshore bank account details of 2,000 "high net worth individuals" and corporations - detailing massive potential tax evasion - will be handed over to the WikiLeaks organisation in London tomorrow by the most important and boldest whistleblower in Swiss banking history, Rudolf Elmer, two days before he goes on trial in his native Switzerland.

Here's the AAP story on today's Wikileaks rally in Sydney:

More than a thousand advocates of free speech have taken to the streets of Sydney in support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Australian-born Mr Assange has enraged the United States by leaking American diplomatic cables that embarrassed world leaders.

This week, Anthony Albanese, the federal Labor member for Grayndler & husband of the state Labor member for Marrickville, Carmel Tebbutt, took a shot at Marrickville Council over its resolution last month to support a global boycott of things Israeli, in response to the Zionist government's ongoing crimes against the people of Palestine.

Now most people know that the Mayor of Marrickville Council is Greens member, Fiona Byrne, who will, coincidentally, come head-to-head with Carmel Tebbutt in the March state election.

Two knights of the realm are at loggerheads as a very nasty stink over the war in Afghanistan wafts through Whitehall. It involves a senior former diplomat accusing the Army of taking men to fight and die in Helmand province simply in order to keep them busy and stop the government cutting numbers.

The diplomat is Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, a former ambassador to Israel, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, who sounded off in a written memo to the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, according to today's Times.

On January 8 the Society of Professional Journalists' Executive Committee voted to retire the Helen Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award. The SPJ's full board is expected to give their final approval within 10 days. In the meantime, amidst the unrelenting backlash, Helen Thomas has rebounded as a columnist for a North Virginian community paper, Falls Church News Press.

In saying her critics ''manufactured a blood libel'', Sarah Palin used a phrase linked to the false accusations made for centuries against Jews, often to malign them as child murderers who coveted the blood of Christian children.

Blood libel has been a central fable of anti-Semitism in which Jews have been accused of using the blood of Gentile children for medicinal purposes or to mix in with matzo, or unleavened bread traditionally eaten at Passover.

The NSW Labor Party asked political donors to pay $3500 a head to join Premier Kristina Keneally at a U2 concert on December 14 in a last-ditch bid to raise funds ahead of the election - but did not get a single taker.

In the end, Ms Keneally did not show up on the night, sources said, and Labor head office and government staffers were left to enjoy the sounds of Bono and the Edge.

Ms Keneally was to host the box in one of the final fundraisers of the year before new laws on January 1 restricted donations from corporations to $5000 a year or $2000 per candidate.

Julia Gilliard ended the parliamentary year relieved to have survived, but clearly aware that mere political survival will not be enough in 2011.  Voters want more from their Prime Minister than boasts about sustaining a minority government.

She is confident. During Monday's brief House of Representatives sitting an Opposition heckler called out to Gillard : "How are you going in Victoria?" The Prime Minister replied: "How are you going here?"

Sara Palin aide Rebecca Mansour says the map Palin published targeting Congresswoman Giffords was just . . . "a political tool" ...

"And I just want to clarify again, maybe it wasn't done on the record enough by us when this graphic came out, the graphic is, we never, ever, ever intended it to be gun sights. It was simply crosshairs."

Bruce then interjected, describing the marks on the map as a "surveyor symbol," & Mansour agreed. "It is a surveyor symbol."

Um hmm.

There is a sickness at the heart of American society. That sickness is the American ruling class, that one per cent who make 24 percent of the country's income; the same one percent who have received 4/5ths of the total increase in US income since 1980. The level of inequality in America puts the country on a par with Russia and Turkey.

The elite in America will do anything to protect their privileged position. Their strategy is twofold - to subdue enemies abroad and to attack those at home who might resist and so make the world safe for US capital.