Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, will be welcome at the November G20 meeting in Brisbane. Treasurer Joe Hockey told a G20 finance ministers meeting in Cairns that there was an emphatic view amongst participants that Putin should be allowed to attend the summit. A number of people, including opposition leader Bill Shorten, had called for the Russian leader to be uninvited.

The G20 finance ministers said they were ‘tantalisingly close’ to achieving their collective target of adding an extra US$2 trillion to the global economy, but Europe’s extended stagnation created a major stumbling block. The Financial Times noted that Germany was under intensive pressure to allow the Eurozone to ease back on austerity, and reported also on the drawing board were plans to stem the loss of revenue from multinationals shifting their profits to low-tax countries, potentially reclaiming billions of dollars.

Reuters says that the OECD’s global tax proposals aimed at global giants like Google and News Corporation are accepted by all members.

Opinions vary as to the effectiveness of the coalition efforts to liquidate the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Britain has now joined Australia in lifting the risk of a terrorist attack to a ‘highly likely’ level. Patrick Cockburn of the UK newspaper, The Independent, argues that nothing will stop ISIS unless there is a ceasefire between Syria’s president Bashir al Assad, and the rebels opposed to his regime.

Nigel Inkster, former deputy-head of Britain’s spy agency MI6 warned in The Observer against getting involved in Syria, thereby antagonising al Assad’s ally, Russia. The Washington Post quotes James Clapper, the US director of national intelligence as saying that America has made the same mistake with ISIS as it did in Vietnam—underestimating the enemy’s will to fight.

New Zealand”s resurgent economy helped prime minister John Key to win a third term, allowing the National Party to govern in its own right for the first time in many years. However, Mr Key announced he would continue to run a coalition government as he thought it has worked well.

In the past two months more words have been written about Scottish politics than at any time in recent decades. In the end, the opinion polls and many forecasts were proved wrong as the ‘No’ supporters gained a decisive victory. But that is not the end of the matter. Ann Applebaum, columnist of the Washington Post, said the vote sent Europe’s elites a warning that beneath the surface, the political earth is moving, as it is elsewhere in Europe. Britain’s prime minister David Cameron and his rival Labour leader Ed Milliband have promised more devolved powers to Scotland. But Cameron is now under pressure from his own Tory MPs to create a minister for England, and to treat the English counties in the same way as the Scots. We have not heard the last of this.