WORLD AGENDA NOVEMBER 2011

November 1-20, Punjab: Reigning champions India host the kabaddi World Cup. The game, hugely popular in South Asia, includes two teams of seven with a "raider" from each team taking turns to score points by tackling opponents in their own half, holding their breath and chanting "kabaddi, kabaddi" during the whole raid.

November 2, New York: A landscape painting by Gustav Klimt, stolen by the Nazis and returned to the grandson of the owner earlier this year, is expected to fetch more than $25 million at auction. The artist painted Litzlberg on the Attersee in 1915.

November 3, Belfast: The brother of Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams is extradited to Northern Ireland to face charges he sexually abused his daughter Aine Tyrell, who has waived her right to anonymity. Liam Adams, 56, denies the allegations.

November 3, Cannes: The task force overseeing new global financial rules is expected to be given more teeth at a meeting of G20 leaders. The Financial Stability Board -- the key driving force behind reform of global financial regulation -- is to get stronger "institutional underpinning", with outspoken Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney certain to become its head when he is formally approved at the summit in France.

November 7, Kazakhstan: Russia launches a flagship deep-space mission designed to return a sample of Phobos -- the larger and closer of Mars' two moons. The Phobos-Grunt mission paves the way for Russia’s return to planetary exploration after a two-decade hiatus.

November 17, Vienna: The UN's nuclear watchdog is expected to publish intelligence strengthening suspicions that Iran is developing nuclear bombs. The International Atomic Energy Agency's report may intensify pressure to increase sanctions against the oil-rich state.

November 20, Madrid: Mariano Rajoy, leader of the conservative People’s Party, seems set for a landslide victory in Spain's general election as the socialist party of outgoing prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero struggles to retain voters after imposing the deepest austerity measures for three decades.

November 28, Cairo: Islamists, Christians and secularists fight for power in Egypt's first parliamentary elections since the fall of President Hosni Mubarak in February. With no political faction emerging as dominant, violence is likely to continue during the country's fragile transition to democracy.

November 28, Kinshasa: Delays threaten the Democratic Republic of Congo's second post-war election, risking political crisis as a leading opposition party says it will no longer recognise Joseph Kabila's government if polls are put back. The mineral rich nation has been crippled by decades of misrule and years of conflict.

November 28, Durban: No deal is expected at annual global climate talks following the disappointments of Copenhagen 2009 and Cancun 2010. With the world preoccupied with reviving the economy, a breakthrough in agreeing a successor to the Kyoto Protocol is not expected.

November (undated), Israel: 550 Palestinians prisoners, including convicted killers, are freed in the second wave of a prisoner swap. The deal exchanged 1,027 Palestinians for one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, seized by Hamas militants in 2006 at the age of 19.
/ENDS