Negotiators paving the way for a global climate change agreement in Paris have cleared a major hurdle, producing a draft accord in record time and raising hopes that a full week of minister-led talks can now clinch a deal despite many sticking points.
The Conservatives' assembly leader, Paul Davies, said: "It is disappointing that after weeks of dithering, ministers have yet to bring forward a coherent programme for government.
During the first week of October trade ministers gathered in Bali, Indonesia, aiming to make progress on a slate of possible deals.
It was the second time in the space of a week that ministers held a marathon, late-night meeting to reach a deal to curtail recourse to public money for bank rescues.
After a week of demonstrations, Prime Minister Papandreou has named a new finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos.
After a week of silence, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin finally addressed the issue this afternoon in a televised question-and-answer marathon with the Russian public.
But on the sidelines of the General Assembly meeting over the last couple of weeks, ministers, ambassadors and heads of state of all sorts, including those who have tussled with Twitter the company, seized on Twitter the social network to spin and spread their message.
"Yours for a freer Oxford," wrote Faulkner, who had a long history of drinking binges, "where publicans can be law-abiding publicans six days a week and ministers of God can be ministers of God all seven days in the week".
Yours for a freer Oxford, where publicans can be law-abiding citizens six days a week, and Ministers of God can be Ministers of God all seven days in the week, as the Founder of their Ministry commanded them to when He ordered them to keep out of temporal politics in His own words: "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's".
In recent weeks a conga line of ministers has passed through.
The work of government goes on, even as the war approaches," says one ambassador.This week, for instance, ministers of European affairs argued ardently over the seven-year EU budget to 2020, even though nobody knows who will be left standing or what currencies they will use, in seven months' or even weeks' time.
