Back then — a long, long week ago — Cypriot president Nicos Anastasiades stood firm: there was no way he would allow uninsured depositors to lose more than 10% of their money. What a difference a week makes: now, if your uninsured deposits are at the Bank of Cyprus, you’re probably going to lose about 40%. And if they’re at Laiki, you’re going to lose everything.

The agreement between the Cypriot government and the Troika of the EU, IMF, and ECB is a bold and brutal geopolitical power-play. There might be language in the official communiqué about how “The Eurogroup looks forward to an agreement between Cyprus and the Russian Federation on a financial contribution”, but given the billions of euros that Russians are being forced to contribute unwillingly, the chances that they’ll happily throw a bit more money into the pot have to be tiny.

Much more importantly, the two main vectors of contagion — hitting insured deposits, and exiting the euro — have been avoided. And most elegantly of all, from the Troika’s point of view, the whole thing has been constructed under existing bank-resolution authorities, which means that no vote needs to be put to the Cypriot parliament, and therefore no amount of Russian pressure can veto the deal in Nicosia. And 800,000 Cypriots will for years to come be paying the price of what Mohamed El-Erian elegantly calls “bailout fatigue”.

A pre-emptive ‘defensive’ nuclear attack on Iran using tactical nuclear weapons was envisaged to annihilate the Islamic Republic's non-existent nuclear weapons program. So-called ‘mini nukes’ were identified as the ‘ideal weapon’ to conduct a pre-emptive nuclear attack.

In 2003, the mini nukes, consisting of bunker-buster bombs with nuclear warheads, were re-categorized by the US Senate as bona fide conventional weapons. The new definition of a nuclear warhead has blurred the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons.

Senator Edward Kennedy, at the time, accused the Bush Administration for having developed “a generation of more useable nuclear weapons.” Through a propaganda campaign which enlisted the support of ‘authoritative’ nuclear scientists, the mini-nukes were upheld as an instrument of peace rather than war.

The practice sacrifice has been held annually for the past several years. This year organizers were unpleasantly surprised by a veto from Israel’s Veterinary Services, which refused to authorize the event. Organizers took the matter to court, and were able to quickly get a ruling permitting the ritual.

The various groups involved in the event were represented by Rabbi Yehuda Glick, who told Arutz Sheva that the ritual was carried out with as much Biblical accuracy as possible. “We took the goat, as the Torah commands, we had an altar built like the real one, and a cooking pit built according to halacha [Jewish law],” he said. “We slaughtered the goat with Leviim singing and priestly clothing, just like in the real Passover sacrifice.”

Leviim are Jews belonging to the Biblical tribe of Levi, whose members took part in Temple services. The ritual was emotionally moving, Rabbi Glick reported. “The symbolism of standing opposite the Temple Mount and preparing for the real Passover sacrifice – it was without doubt a special moment,” he said.

"After three years of a disconnect in Israeli-Turkish relations," he wrote, "I decided that this is the time to rebuild them. The changing reality around us forces us to continually re-examine our relations with the countries surrounding us in the region. In the last three years, the state of Israel has made several attempts to end the disconnect between us and Turkey.”

"The fact that the crisis in Syria is getting worse by the minute was, for me, a central consideration. Syria is crumbling, and the huge, advanced stockpiles of weapons within it are starting to fall into the hands of different elements. The great danger is that the chemical weapon stockpiles will fall into the hands of terror groups.”

"The reality in Syria, which includes, among other things, jihadist elements that have begun to establish their presence next to our border on the Golan, creates great challenges for our security establishment. We are following the goings-on there and are prepared to respond accordingly.”

"It is important that Turkey and Israel, which border on Syria, are able to communicate with each other, and this is also desirable with regard to additional regional challenges.”

Emeritus Pope Benedict embraced his luncheon guest on Pope Francis' arrival at the helipad at the papal summer villa at Castel Gandolfo, which has become Benedict's temporary home. Benedict, who stepped down from the papacy at the end of February, wore a white padded jacket and looked rather frail in comparison to 76-year-old Pope Francis, nine years his junior.

The two white-clad clerics then prayed together in the villa's private chapel where Pope Francis insisted on kneeling side by side with his predecessor, rather than using the padded papal kneeler prepared for him. "No! We are brothers, we pray together!" Francis told Benedict in a gesture of humility.

Pope Francis has arrived in Rome “from the ends of the earth,” and he is innovating the manner of governing the Church from on high, starting with himself. The reform of the curia will come. And many other things will come as well. But after “a certain time,” he has cautioned.

Meanwhile, he has told all of the heads of the curia whose mandates ended with the resignation of his predecessor to get back to work. “Temporarily,” and “donec aliter provideatur,” until he, the new pope, decides. Since March 13 the Vatican curia has been a tremulous army of functionaries without a certain future.

The new pope wants to be the bishop of Rome for all intents and purposes, as he implied immediately on the first Sunday of his pontificate, with the Mass celebrated in the parish of St Ann on the border of the Vatican and the Borgo, amid a rejoicing crowd. He will go from church to church, he will visit center and periphery, “for the evangelization of this city that is so beautiful.” In direct contact with the people of the diocese which now is his “bride.”

Above all, Pope Francis loves to call himself “bishop of Rome.” But he also holds firm, and said so immediately, that “the Church of Rome is that which presides in charity over all the Churches.”

Today the tiny island's 56 MPs have a stark choice, to implement draconian capital controls and to put the country's largest banks into receivership or else face exit from the euro and a dramatic economic crash.

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, warned Cyprus this morning that it had to abandon an economy built on a financial sector, fuelled by Russian cash, which is eight times larger than Cypriot GDP. "It must realise its current business model is dead," she said

“They have no answer for that question. They refuse to answer that,” Huelscamp told Infowars and We Are Change reporter Luke Rudkowski on Friday. Meanwhile, the Social Security Administration has reportedly purchased 174,000 hollow-point bullets - which are designed to explode on impact for maximum damage - for agents who investigate corruption and other crimes.

But why does this government agency need a type of ammunition for Main Street, USA, that has been categorically banned for use in international war by the Geneva Convention? As former Marine Richard Mason told WHPTV News in Pennsylvania recently, hollow-point bullets are not the best choice for training purposes because they are more expensive than standard rounds.

“We never trained with hollow points, we didn't even see hollow points my entire four-and-a-half years in the Marine Corps,” Mason said. “It is utterly inconceivable that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is planning a coup d’etat against President Obama and the Congress to install herself as Supreme Ruler of the United States of America,” Ralph Benko wrote in the Forbes op-ed piece. “There, however, are real signs that the department bureaucrats are running amok.”

Certain types of bacteria found in the pre-cut salad bags can be almost impossible to kill, Professor Hugh Pennington said, unless the leaves are irradiated – a process the public would oppose. His claim follows a Health Protection Agency investigation into an outbreak of salad-linked Cryptosporidium infections that affected around 300 people in England and Scotland in May 2012.

Professor Pennington said: "It is generally safer to eat a burger than the salad that goes with it. Despite the recent horsemeat and other scandals, the meat can be traced and through a rigorous process that checks for its quality etc. That does not exist to the same rigour for salad. You can only make vegetables safe by cooking and you can`t obviously do that with salad."

Professor Pennington also pointed out that a bean sprout farm in northern Germany was identified as the most likely source of many of the infections in the E. coli outbreak that left 22 people dead in 2011. The farm, located in Uelzen, south of Hamburg, was the epicentre of the outbreak that has also made more than 2,000 people ill.

The European sovereign debt crisis has fundamentally changed Europe’s geopolitical map. Instead of Europe being divided into West and East as it was during the Cold War, the Continent has become divided into a relatively prosperous North and a chaotic South.

Instead of Europe being led by France and Germany with Britain playing a balancing act, leadership has fallen squarely on Germany’s shoulders. It is no longer about a more European Germany. It is about more German Europe. Today it is a different Europe: Germany may be first among equals, but it is still committed to the European Union.