Need to know: U.S. President Barack Obama arrived in South Korea on Wednesday for talks that will focus on how to tempt North Korea back to nuclear disarmament talks and a delayed trade pact between Seoul and Washington.

And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has started an unannounced visit to Afghanistan to see Hamed Karzai be sworn in to a second five-year term as president on Thursday. She will also meet with U.S. General Stanley McChrystal.

Want to know: Iraqi vice-president Tariq al-Hashemi has vetoed Iraq’s new election law. The move threatens to delay the election date, and possibly the withdrawal of American troops. Hashemi insisted however that Parliament could quickly amend the law, and he claimed election officials had said there is still time to prepare for the vote scheduled for January 16.

Also: Somali pirates have fired upon the US Maersk Alabama, the ship that was hijacked by pirates in April this year. Take a look at the GlobalPost video of European Union efforts to stop the piracy by patroling the Indian Ocean off the Horn of Africa.

Dull but important: A United Nations summit has ended in Rome after making little headway toward reducing hunger in a world with enough resources to feed all, or so says the AP. GlobalPost has done its own reporting, from the ground in Zimbabwe.

Just because: Some of us think a service for outsourcing one's homework should have been around a lot sooner: GlobalPost today carries Saritha Rai's excellent story on that very subject.

Wacky: Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, in Rome for a U.N. food summit, reportedly spent several hours in the company of 200 "attractive girls between 18 and 35 years old, at least 1.70 meters (5 foot, 7 inches) tall, well-dressed but not in mini-skirts or low cut dresses." According to Reuters, Gadhafi tried to convert the Italians, recruited by the Hostessweb agency, to Islam.

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