In the northern Italian city of Trieste, parents are in uproar over a taxpayer-funded elementary school program that includes dressing little boys as girls and girls as boys to overcome so-called “gender stereotypes.” Schools are calling the exercise “the game of respect,” which purportedly adopts many guidelines from the European standards on sex education, attributed to the World Health Organization.

The so-called “game of respect” consists in a box containing several cards, presenting the figures of different working roles: male and female housewives and husbands, male and female plumbers and firefighters, with the figures represented in exactly the same way to show that males and females are completely interchangeable.

There is also a card with a game called “If he were she and she were he,” where boys and girls are expected to exchange the clothes they are wearing: the boy dresses as a girl and the girl as a boy, and they discuss how they feel in that new “role.” Parents are especially up in arms over the school district’s attempt to conceal the program and its contents from them.

A prescription issued by Ms Zeng allows a patient to obtain medical cannabis in any form at the Canna Clinic. Behind the counter are jars filled with dark-green bundles of various strains of marijuana, from "B52" to "Afghan Kush" and "BC Bud." Cannabis cookies are also on display, along with cannabis-infused honey. Today's special is pre-rolled joints and cannabis chocolates for $2 (€1.8) apiece.

Here in Vancouver, British Columbia, anyone who submits to a pseudo-medical examination can buy as much cannabis as they like. The city is home to a population of some 600,000 and at least 80 specialized stores for cannabis, despite it being illegal in Canada.

Francis also called for a new global political authority tasked with “tackling … the reduction of pollution and the development of poor countries and regions”. His appeal echoed that of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, who in a 2009 encyclical proposed a kind of super-UN to deal with the world’s economic problems and injustices.

According to the lengthy draft, which was obtained and published by L’Espresso magazine, the Argentinean pope will align himself with the environmental movement and its objectives. While accepting that there may be some natural causes of global warming, the pope will also state that climate change is mostly a man-made problem.

“Humanity is called to take note of the need for changes in lifestyle and changes in methods of production and consumption to combat this warming, or at least the human causes that produce and accentuate it,” he wrote in the draft. “Numerous scientific studies indicate that the greater part of the global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases … given off above all because of human activity.”

The pope will also single out those obstructing solutions. In an apparent reference to climate-change deniers, the draft states: “The attitudes that stand in the way of a solution, even among believers, range from negation of the problem, to indifference, to convenient resignation or blind faith in technical solutions.”

“Somebody inside the Vatican leaked the document with the obvious intention of embarrassing the pope,” said Robert Mickens, a longtime Vatican expert and editor of Global Pulse, an online Catholic magazine.

The Vatican press office was tense on Tuesday. Hours after a draft of the encyclical was published Monday on the website of L’Espresso, an Italian magazine, the Vatican indefinitely revoked the credentials of Sandro Magister, the journalist who wrote a short introduction that accompanied the magazine’s publication of the draft. Vatican officials say the leaked draft is not the final version of the encyclical, which has been barred from release until Thursday.

Leaks are hardly uncommon in journalism — some would consider them sustenance — and Vatican journalism has been no exception. Most recently, Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy was undermined when his butler leaked documents, in an episode known as VatiLeaks, that exposed infighting and discord in the Vatican. The scandal is considered one of the reasons that Benedict resigned, leading to the March 2013 election of Francis.

But this time, the depopulation agenda may be codified by the Vatican. Professor John Schellnhuber has been chosen as a speaker for the Vatican's rolling out of a Papal document on climate change. He's the professor who previously said the planet is overpopulated by at least six billion people. Now, the Vatican is giving him a platform which many expect will result in an official Church declaration in support of radical depopulation in the name of "climate science."

"The teaching document, called an encyclical, is scheduled for release on June 18 at Vatican City," reports Breitbart.com. "Perhaps with the exception of the 1968 encyclical on contraception, no Vatican document has been greeted with such anticipation."

Sachs, a special advisor to the United Nations and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, is a media superstar who can always be counted on to pontificate endlessly on such topics as income inequality and global health. This time, writing in a Catholic publication, he may have gone off his rocker, revealing the real global game plan.

The United States, Sachs writes in the Jesuit publication, America, is “a society in thrall” to the idea of unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But the “urgent core of Francis’ message” will be to challenge this “American idea” by “proclaiming that the path to happiness lies not solely or mainly through the defense of rights but through the exercise of virtues, most notably justice and charity.”

In these extraordinary comments, which constitute a frontal assault on the American idea of freedom and national sovereignty, Sachs has made it clear that he hopes to enlist the Vatican in a global campaign to increase the power of global or foreign-dominated organizations and movements.

Sachs takes aim at the phrase, which comes from America’s founding document, the United States Declaration of Independence, that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The plan is quite simple: world government through global taxes, with a religious face to bring it about.

Cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, the archbishop emeritus of Guadalajara, presided at the closed doors ceremony, the first ever in the history of Mexico. Also participating were Archbishop Jesús Carlos Cabrero of San Luis Potosí, Spanish demonologist and exorcist Father José Antonio Fortea, and a smaller group of priests and lay people.

The event was not made known to the general public beforehand. According to Archbishop Cabrero, the reserved character of the May 20 ceremony was intended to avoid any misguided interpretations of the ritual. But how can an entire country become infested by demons to the point that it’s necessary to resort to an Exorcismo Magno? “To the extent sin increases more and more in a country, to that extent it becomes easier for the demons to tempt (people),” Fr Fortea told CNA.

Fr Fortea said that “the exorcism performed in San Luís Potosí is the first ever carried out in Mexico in which the exorcists came from different parts of the country and gathered together to exorcise the powers of darkness, not from a person, but from the whole country.”

The Spanish exorcist warned that “to the extent there is more witchcraft and Satanism going on in a country, to that extent there will be more extraordinary manifestations of those powers of darkness.” He also emphasized that a bishop “can authorize its occurrence once a year with his priests in the cathedral. The bishop is the shepherd and he can use the power he has received to drive away the invisible wolves from the sheep, since Satan is like a roaring lion prowling around looking for someone to devour, and the shepherds can drive away the predator from the victim,” he concluded.

The contacts have gone through a number of Arab and European channels in a bid to firm up an informal ceasefire agreement that took hold last August, ending a 50-day war in Gaza started when Hamas escalated its rocket attacks on Israeli civilian centers. "There has been indirect contact between Israel and Hamas, messages passed via Arab channels as well as through European and Turkish sources," one of the sources told AFP, describing it as "an indirect exchange of ideas."

The Egyptian-brokered truce came into effect on August 26, with the sides pledging to resume indirect contacts within a month to pin down a lasting ceasefire and discuss crunch issues. But the follow-up talks were delayed several times and never formally resumed.

A drone strike last week is now confirmed to have hit Nasser al-Wuhayshi, Al-Qaeda’s second-in-command worldwide after the promotion of Ayman al-Zawahiri to the top job. That happened after the Al-Qaeda beast was very firmly decapitated in May 2011, when Osama Bin Laden was shot dead in his compound in Pakistan, and his body dumped at sea. Since then, the United States has reverted to its favoured practice of using drone and other air strikes to take out top leaders.

On Sunday morning, it targeted, and may have killed, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the one-eyed bandit who led a semi-independent but notorious group of jihadists, Al-Murabitoun, which nevertheless considered itself part of the Al-Qaeda brand. It has also killed a number of the senior leadership of Al-Qaeda’s great rival, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil). Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who now prefers to be known as Caliph Ibrahim, is said to be slowly recovering from spinal injuries sustained in a strike on Iraq.

There is something alarming, however, about the boasts of success. For all the deaths and injuries of top leaders, Al-Qaeda and Islamic State now control more territory than they have ever done. The hydra has simply grown more heads.

It includes the easing of travel restrictions that were imposed in response to the second intifada. In an embargoed statement, issued one day before the holiday commences and after weeks of security preparations by the IDF, Jerusalem Police and COGAT, Major General Yoav Mordechai announced the historic steps to ease restrictive traveling policies during the holiday.

Meanwhile, Temple Mount activist Yehudah Glick – who was shot four times last year for his activism on behalf of Jewish prayer rights there – said his response would likely be perceived as counterintuitive. “I may surprise you,” he said. “I really hope and wish that the Muslim population will celebrate Ramadan as civilized people, and do what is expected from their religion: to pray and repent.”

“If I’m a fascist, then you’re a terrorist,” Magal shot back at the Israeli Arab MK. Zahalka warned the assembled MKs that “blood will flow” if the current agreement — in which Israeli security forces restrict Jewish prayer and occasionally access to the site in an attempt to keep a shaky peace at the holy site — is changed. The meeting soon disbanded.

Magal underscored the need to allow Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount and called for the dismantling of the Muslim guard stationed on the site to block entry by Jews. In a number of cases, the guards, or “Mourabitoun,” an Arabic term for those protecting Islamic holy sites from desecration, have been involved in recent clashes with Israeli security forces or Jewish worshipers. “The Mourabitoun are responsible for provoking Jewish worshipers, and have broken the terms of status quo. The police need to enforce order on the site and remove the guards immediately,” Magal continued.

The reason for the resignation is the government's inability to act in the Gaza strip, AFP reported earlier in the day citing senior officials with the Palestinian Authority. “This one [government] is weak and there is no chance that Hamas will allow it to work in Gaza,” said Amin Maqbul, secretary general of the ruling Fatah movement's Revolutionary Council, according to AFP.

While Maqbul is quoted as saying that a new government will be formed within 24 hours, another source, an unnamed attendee of the 15th Revolutionary Council conference quoted by the Maan news agency claims it could take several days.

However, the issue was not discussed at the latest meeting of the collective Hamas-Fatah government, according to government spokesman Ihab Bseiso, AFP reports. The current government was forged by the rival Palestinian movements Hamas and Fatah in June 2014, after a unity pact ended a violent split that began in 2007.

The Kuwaiti newspaper Alrai quoted Palestinian sources close to the presidency as saying that "these threats came during a meeting that was held between a senior Israeli security official and the Chief of Civil Affairs Hussein al-Sheikh".

The Israeli official reportedly pointed to "the need for the Palestinian leadership to stop its fake threats about halting the security coordination and dissolving the Palestinian Authority, and if that happens our tanks would be sweeping the West Bank within 24 hours, and we have a complete plan for the management of the West Bank in a better way than the one that is currently in place."

The Governor declared the plan a legislative priority, and one of his emergency legislative items during his State of the State address. “We are doing this because border security has turned out to be a real challenge for the people of this state, not just on the border region but across communities across the entire state of Texas,” the Texas governor said.

Because of the magnitude of the challenge, Abbott declared securing the border an emergency issue. He added, “And the Texas legislature responded profoundly, and strongly.” Breitbart Texas attended the bill signing ceremony, where the Governor noted that the Texas-Mexico border can be a gateway to crimes committed in other parts of the US. He also said that the comprehensive legislation funds an anti-gang program “to dismember the gang operations that are causing havoc for the people of Texas.” The anti-gang program will be operated out of the Office of the Governor.

The Governor told the crowd gathered for the signing ceremony that there are more than 20,000 dangerous gang members associated with cross-border traffic-related crime in Houston alone. Senator Birdwell told Breitbart Texas, “The will of the people of Texas is to protect their safety, and that’s what HB 11 will do.” In seeking this reimbursement, Governor Abbott said, “Texas is willing to shoulder the responsibility; we expect the federal government to foot the bill.” Abbott signed the bills into law and declared, “Texas is now a safer place.”

At a military and arms fair on Tuesday, Putin announced the addition of the intercontinental ballistic missiles which, he said, were able to overcome "even the most technically advanced anti-missile defense systems." After the announcement, Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), said that Putin's statement was one reason why the international military alliance was upping its deterrence measures.

The Russian Foreign Ministry issued its warning on Monday against military presence on its western border after the New York Times and other media organizations reported that the US had offered to store military equipment for up to 5,000 troops — including battle tanks and heavy weapons — in allied eastern European countries.

Moscow has also accused the US of being responsible for the political uprising in Ukraine in 2014 that preceded the annexation of Crimea, in which the pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych was ousted. "It is convenient to use propaganda to cover up the responsibility of the US for the anti-constitutional coup in Ukraine and in Kiev," said the Russian Foreign Ministry in its statement. "The US has assiduously nurtured an anti-Russian [attitude] among its European allies in order to take advantage of the current difficult moment for the further expansion of its military presence."