Iran, Venezuela and the United States exchanged verbal machine-gun fire at the United Nations. The Pope ignited a new fight over semantics with Islam and U.S. politicians locked horns over the terminology of torture law.
A war of words broke out across the globe this week and commentators wasted no time filling the world's English-language opinion pages with clarifications of what was being said.
There was also a coup in Thailand and a few new things were written -- although unsurprisingly nothing was done -- about the crisis in Sudan.