Barometer

Good week/ Bad week

Good week/ Bad week

Good week

Rory McIlroy

A golden end to a golden year for the Northern superstar, winning the DP World Championship in Dubai last weekend, confirming he is ready to challenge for a place in golf’s pantheon of all-time top stars

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Mahmoud Abbas

The Gaza conflict looked like it had sidelined the Palestinian president, but the successful bid for UN recognition has reaffirmed his relevance

Louis Walsh

In the week of the Leveson report, the X Factor judge won a €500,000 settlement from the Sun for wrongly claiming he sexually assaulted a man in a Dublin club

Bad week


Mohamed Morsi

The Egyptian president, meanwhile, went from earning praise for his role in the Gaza ceasefire to earning global criticism for a brazen power grab that threatened Egypt’s fledgling democracy. Huge protests suggest he overestimated his power

Lindsay Lohan

Her performance as Elizabeth Taylor in TV movie Liz and Dick received an unprecedented critical drubbing and was mercilessly mocked on social networks. And then, as if her week wasn’t bad enough, she was arrested for assault in New York on Wednesday

Artur Mas

The man behind the latest push for Catalan independence didn’t get the result he was looking for in last weekend’s regional elections, with his CDC failing to win a majority