IRAQ

Herewith follows some of my predictions for what may happen in 2012 with respect to some key foreign countries.

The incredible events of 2011 will likely influence global history for decades to come.

European stocks rose to their highest in two weeks on Friday, tracking Wall Street gains as the U.S., the world's biggest economy, showed further signs of recovery, especially in the labor market.

The TSX finished higher for a third-straight session on Thursday as worries over European bank lending eased and U.S. economic data pointed to gradual economic improvements, sending financial and energy issues up sharply.

U.S. February crude jumped 90 cents to $99.57 per barrel after reaching a high of $99.87. Brent February crude rose 46 cents to $108.17 per barrel. Trading volumes were light. The oil price increase was different than a week ago when Europe concerns pushed prices below $100.

Ron Paul's 2012 run represents the best anti-Obama hope America has. Paul and Mitt Romney polled the best against President Barack Obama in a recent CNN / ORC poll. Paul polled best against Obama in an earlier NBC News / Marist Poll.

Occupy Wall Street registers as one of the biggest surprises of 2011. Despite constant criticisms that it lacked a concrete set of goals or demands, Occupy Wall Street's broad critique of economic injustice resonated with a country still grappling with the fallout from the financial crisis. A timeline of the movement.

On the old TV show, The Twilight Zone, people would often wake up to find that the world had changed in some weird and inexplicable way. The holidays are kind of like that. Our music tastes, our fashion, and even our work habits, are temporarily transformed.

TLC announced at the end of this week's Next Great Baker episode that contestant and Iraq War veteran Sgt. Wesley Durden had died -- not mentioning that it was reportedly of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Army Sgt. Wesley Durden Jr., a former contestant on TLC's reality show Next Great Baker, was shown voted off the show on Monday night's episode. However, Durden, a Jacksonville native, completed suicide back in October after production ended, according to reports.

Hashemi is forbidden to leave the country.

For anyone who follows film, television, publishing and newspapers -- our culture industry -- Robert Levine, the former editor of Billboard and a New York Times alum, has written a must-read book.

Whether it involves embarrassing tweets, tone-deaf CEOs or even the disappearance of money, some oops moments need be relived just one more time.

Prosecutors have been aggressively enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act over the last several years to combat overseas bribery, hitting a peak of 48 lawsuits in 2010. Now the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is leading the effort to narrow the scope of the law.

Military prosecutors sought to link U.S. Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning directly to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Monday at a hearing to determine whether Manning will be court-martialled in the biggest leak of classified documents in American history.

Attorneys for Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning on Monday challenged evidence linking him to the biggest classified document leak in U.S. history, arguing others had access to the same files and that it cannot be proven Manning sent anything to WikiLeaks from his computer.

The arrest symbolizes rising sectarian tensions in Iraq.

Iranian state television on Sunday aired what it described as the confession of an Iranian man detained for spying for the CIA.

U.S. oil major Exxon Mobil Corp is mulling a 7 billion pound ($10.9 billion) takeover of Kurdistan-focused explorer Gulf Keystone Petroleum, the Independent on Sunday reported.

The last convoy of U.S. soldiers pulled out of Iraq on Sunday, ending nearly nine years of war that cost almost 4,500 American and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives and left a country still grappling with political uncertainty.

Bradley Manning, the suspected source of the largest leak of classified U.S. documents in history, spent his 24th birthday in military court on Saturday listening to investigators detail how they pieced together the case against him.