EUROPEAN UNION

What will the year 2012 bring? Well, it looks like: the Summer Olympics in London. After that, venturing a prediction is a tough task, but here are a few.

Iran symbolically threatened the U.S. and Israel on two fronts Monday: the testing of new long-range rockets and the production of a nuclear fuel rod.

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators will meet this week after more than a year of deadlock in peacemaking, officials said Sunday, but both sides played down prospects of any imminent resumption of talks.

Policymakers marked the 10th anniversary Sunday of the introduction of euro notes and coins by urging governments in the currency bloc to save and consolidate to overcome their debt crisis.

Dysfunctional politics threatens to deliver a protracted period of slow global growth, possibly lasting well beyond 2012, which will only deepen the political and economic problems for the West.

Iran dismissed on Sunday the United States' move to impose new sanctions on financial institutions dealing with the Islamic state's central bank over the country's disputed nuclear program, the Students news agency reported.

Iran said it had delayed its promised long-range missile tests in the Persian Gulf on Saturday and signaled it was ready for fresh talks with the West on its disputed nuclear program.

Toronto's main stock index closed higher on Friday, the last trading day of the year, as financial and resource shares rallied on signs the U.S. economy was recovering, but the jump was not enough to avert the market's first year-on-year decline since 2008.

Woken up without explanation and carried to a police vehicle on a stretcher, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has been moved from a Kiev prison to a remote prison colony about 300 miles east of the capital on Friday, her party said.

World Peace. It just wouldn't be right to start without saying that, like any good Miss America contestant, thanks so much for that trope to Sandra Bullock and her star turn in Miss Congeniality.

February gold hit a fresh six-month low of $1,523.90 per ounce overnight. Gold has been under intense pressure since it closed at $1,741.80 per ounce Dec. 7.

Turkish warplanes killed 35 civilian smugglers in northern Iraq after mistaking them for Kurdish militants, Ankara's ruling party said on Thursday, promising not to allow a cover-up of an incident that threatens to wreck relations with minority Kurds.

A team of Arab League monitors will begin its third day of observation Thursday by visiting three more Syrian cities, following the Syrian government's announcement that it had released 755 prisoners and the observers' leader saying he had seen nothing frightening during an initial trip to the violence-wracked city of Homs.

The United States warned the Iranian government that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz will not be tolerated after Iran threatened to do so if sanctions were put in place.

The pipeline will carry Russian gas under the Black Sea into Europe.

Stocks fell about 1 percent on Wednesday on concerns about the economy in early 2012 while the euro hit a fresh 11-month low against the dollar before a key auction of long-dated Italian debt on Thursday.

Samsung Electronics Co, Sharp Corp and five other makers of liquid crystal displays agreed to pay more than $553 million to settle consumer and state regulatory claims that they conspired to fix prices for LCD panels in televisions, notebook computers and monitors.

Deutsche Boerse and NYSE Euronext have extended the deadline for completion of their planned merger to March 31 next year as they seek to convince European regulators to back the $9 billion deal.

Samsung Electronics Co, Sharp Corp and five other makers of liquid crystal displays agreed to pay $553 million to settle consumer and state regulatory claims that they conspired to fix prices for LCD panels in televisions, notebook computers and monitors.

Samsung Electronics Co, Sharp Corp and five other makers of liquid crystal displays agreed to pay $539 million to settle claims they conspired to fix prices and stifle competition for LCD panels in televisions, notebook computers and monitors, according to a court filing.

Europe faces another year of dismal economic performance in 2012 that will weigh on global growth, but emerging markets and the United States should at least keep the world economy moving in the right direction.