The gold bugs will be pleased. Analysts at the Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics (BREE) reckon gold is going to be a star performer in 2012 with a forecast average price for the year of $US1850 an ounce.

That would represent a 17 per cent increase on the expected average for the just about completed 2011, and because BREE is also forecasting dollar parity for 2012, we don't have to worry about a currency conversion.

BREE reckons gold's bumper outlook is supported by a number of factors - low interest rates in the US (confirmed overnight) and Europe, net buying by central banks and continued strong investment and fabrication demand from US dollar-weary consumers in developing economies.

In trying to assert herself, the besieged PM has added to her problems.

From the Rudds to the Bolts, an issue that divides the nation also divides families.

This morning, Foreign Affairs Minister Kevin Rudd's sister Loree Rudd said she quit the Australian Labor Party last week in protest at its policy shift from opposing to supporting gay marriage after the national Labor Party Conference.

"I no longer liked the direction the Labor Party was going at state or federal level and I couldn't work for a party that had endorsed homosexuals marrying," she said.

US president Barack Obama says the United States has asked Iran to return a captured spy drone, as a top Iranian official says his country will reverse engineer the plane and is in the "final stages" of unlocking its software secrets.

Mr Obama confirmed the request for the drone, which Tehran said it brought down while overflying its territory, at a news conference with Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki.

"We've asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond," he said.

Tehran says it is planning to use the downed craft to produce a fleet of its own drones.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has denied ministers threatened to resign from Parliament if they were demoted in yesterday's Cabinet reshuffle.

Two of the so-called faceless men who engineered Ms Gillard's coup against Kevin Rudd last year, Bill Shorten and Mark Arbib, were promoted yesterday as Ms Gillard unveiled an expanded Cabinet.

Rudd supporter Kim Carr was booted out of Cabinet and there have been reports two ministers - Robert McClelland and Peter Garrett - threatened to resign from Parliament and force by-elections if they were sacked.

From Paul Sheehan...

Everyone has a bad banking story, and we take for granted all the productive things the banks do for us. It is the bad stories that come to mind when the big four banks issue their profit statements. In the latest financial year the big four made a combined profit of $24 billion.

The EPA's findings about fracking's contamination of ground water have sent a shockwave through a gas industry in denial.

A television advertisement shown during a children's show after school and depicting students sharing Oreo cookies was not aimed at children, the Advertising Standards Board ruled, because it was appealing to adults' sense of nostalgia.

Writing from the very region that produces more clichés per square foot than any other "story" – the Middle East – I should perhaps pause before I say I have never read so much garbage, so much utter drivel, as I have about the world financial crisis.

The O'Farrell government's whip in the upper house has become a minor sensation on Twitter this afternoon, attacking other users, telling one to "go fuck yourself" and declaring himself the "Marieke Hardy" of the Right.

Peter Phelps, a member of the hard right of the NSW Liberal Party, who notably once described traffic lights as a "Bolshevist menace", joined the social networking site less than a month ago with some trepidation.

Dr Phelps quickly responded: "go fuck yourself, commie! And you can't complain because I put in smiley ;-)".

A number of Twitter users criticised him for the response, which only elicited further strong reactions from the politician.

On Dec. 8, 1941, Franklin Roosevelt took the rostrum before a joint session of Congress to ask for a declaration of war on Japan.

A day earlier, at dawn, carrier-based Japanese aircraft had launched a sneak attack devastating the U.S. battle fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Europe’s worst financial crisis in generations is forging a new European Union, pushing Britain to the sidelines and creating a more integrated, fiscally disciplined core of nations under the auspices of a resurgent Germany.