Marriage Equality is stalled in the Western US – An anti-drug fighter is hurt in a plane crash – Germany’s leader is sidelined after a skiing accident – And why is a classic 1980s band getting back together?  

Spain has held an emergency meeting with Panama to resolve the dispute that could bring expansion of the Panama Canal to a halt.  The Spanish-led consortium undertaking the massive project to update the canal to accommodate modern super-sized freighters says Panama owes US$1.6 Billion in cost overruns.  All sides are hopeful an agreement will be reached and construction will continue.

The leader of a vigilante group that fights Mexican drug cartels was injured in a plane crash.  One person died and four others were injured in the crash in the town of La Huacana.  The transport ministry as well as state and federal prosecutors are investigating the cause.  55-year old Jose Manuel Mireles was taken to a hospital in Mexico City for his protection.

The US Supreme Court has blocked further same-sex marriages in the western state of Utah while the conservative state government appeals a decision to allow marriage equality.  Roughly 1,000 Gay and Lesbian couples have wed since 20 December when a lower court struck down the heavily-Mormon state’s ban.  Those marriages are not in legal limbo.

Three Czech political parties signed an agreement to form a Center-Left government, to be led by 42-year old Social Democrat Bohuslav Sobotka.  It signals the beginning of the end to an acrimonious period of Czech politics marked by an economic slowdown and several corruption scandals that have destroyed confidence in the right.  The first priority will be to further integrate the economy into the rest of the European Union.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is out of commission for at least three weeks after fracturing her pelvis in a skiing accident.  It dashes her plans to hit the ground running in the New Year, and her domestic and international meetings have been cancelled for the next three weeks.  Doctors warned her that healing the fracture is going to require “lots of laying down”.

Baby Panda!  Baby Panda!

Obligatory song title pun:  Sweet dreams are made of this, Eurythmics are getting back together!  No, really.. Would I lie to you?  But not to play one of their many 1980s hits.  Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart will perform as a duo for “The Night That Changed America: A Grammy Salute to the Beatles.”  The event will be taped at the Los Angeles Convention Center on Jan. 27, a day after the Grammy Awards.  They didn’t announce which Beatles tune they’d play, but Keith Urban will perform as well, paired with John Mayer to perform “Don’t Let Me Down”.

Aging martial arts movie actor Steven Seagal says he’s considering running for governor of the state of Arizona, in America’s southwest.  If he does and he wins, he’ll be the first governor in American history whose victory speech would go direct-to-video on the bargain shelf at Blockbuster.

Legendary Hong Kong movie producer Run Run Shaw is dead at age 106.  His Shaw Brothers studios produced a thousand films, pioneering the Kung Fu genre (The One-armed Swordsman, The Five Fingers of Death) which influenced future generations of Hollywood directors and paved the way for subsequent global superstars such as Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan.