JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - A large group of hareidi-religious Jews ascended the Temple Mount Tuesday and received friendly service from the police there - unlike the harsh police treatment that Jews typically receive on the Mount in recent years. One of the Jews was even allowed to fully prostrate himself in prayer, facing in the direction of the location of the ancient Temple - which is now occupied by a Muslim mosque.
USA - The latest attempt to stop the Gulf of Mexico oil leak has failed, the oil giant BP has said. BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles said the firm was now shifting to a new strategy to stop the spill. In the failed procedure - known as "top kill" - the firm had been blasting waste material and heavy mud into a ruptured well.
CHINA - The leaders of Japan, China and South Korea have said the sinking of a South Korean warship poses a threat to peace and stability in the region. But China did not condemn North Korea over the incident, despite facing pressure from Seoul to take a stance.
CANADA - Canada's Conservative government says the nearly $1 billion it plans to spend on security at the G-8 and G-20 summits next month is worth it. Canada has budgeted up to 930 million Canadian dollars (US$885 million) for the summits.
NORTH KOREA - North Korea threatened to scrap all military assurance agreements with South Korea on Thursday and warned of an immediate attack should Seoul intrude on the disputed maritime border, further raising tensions on the peninsula.
CHINA - World stock markets put in some strong rises on Thursday, boosted by supportive comments from China on the strength of the euro. The agency that manages the country's huge foreign assets said it was not rethinking its holdings in euros. That led to a positive day's trading and left shares in all key markets with good gains.
HAITI - "A new earthquake" is what Haitian peasant farmer leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste of the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP) called the news that Monsanto will be dumping 60,000 seed sacks (475 tons) of hybrid corn seeds and vegetable seeds on Haiti, seeds doused with highly toxic fungicides such as thiram, known to be extremely dangerous to farm workers.
USA - The Atlantic storm season may be the most intense since 2005, when Hurricane Katrina killed over a thousand people after crashing through Gulf of Mexico energy facilities, the US government's top climate agency predicted on Thursday.
EUROPE - The eurozone's debt crisis hangs like a dark cloud over Europe's economic prospects. But it is not yet clear that the Continent's slow recovery from its worst recession since the second world war will be blown off course.
EUROPE - This financial crisis is worse than the sub-prime crash of 2008 because the sums are so much bigger and it is governments that are in dire straits. Mervyn King, the Bank of England Governor, summed it up best: "Dealing with a banking crisis was difficult enough," he said the other week, "but at least there were public-sector balance sheets on to which the problems could be moved. Once you move into sovereign debt, there is no answer; there's no backstop."
SYRIA - A colossal Iran-funded and directed armament program has enabled Syria to field 1,000 ballistic missiles and Hezbollah 1,000 rockets, all pointed at specific Israeli military and civilian locations, including the densely populated conurbation around Tel Aviv, military sources reveal.
GERMANY - Bad weather and tornadoes caused severe damage and disrupted travel in Saxony and Brandenburg on Monday. A six-year-old girl was killed when a tree fell on the car in which she was sitting. Tornadoes in the south of the state of the eastern German state of Brandenburg and the north of the state of Saxony claimed one life and severely damaged buildings on Monday.
USA - Tony Blair is set to earn millions of pounds advising an American businessman on how to make money from tackling climate change. The former prime minister will be paid at least 700,000 pounds a year to act as a "strategic adviser" to Khosla Ventures, a venture capitalist firm founded by Indian billionaire Vinod Khosla.
USA - The M3 money supply in the United States is contracting at an accelerating rate that now matches the average decline seen from 1929 to 1933, despite near zero interest rates and the biggest fiscal blitz in history.
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - Beset by questions about Jerusalem's future in talks with the Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reached for the Bible on Wednesday to stake out the Jewish state's contested claim on the city.