VATICAN - Pope Francis issued a profuse apology to victims of sex abuse by Catholic clergy, including two Britons, denouncing the Church’s “complicity” in what he described as “execrable acts of abuse”. In the first such encounter of his papacy, the Pope held a series of “intense” one-on-one meetings with the six victims – two from the UK, two from Ireland and two from Germany. The Pope celebrated an early morning Mass with the three men and women in the chapel of Casa Santa Martha, his residence inside the Vatican, and then sat down to breakfast with them. The British and Germans chose not to have their identities disclosed, but an Irish victim said she was encouraged by the meeting, after years of “unbelievable” cover-ups by the Church.

JAPAN - A powerful typhoon has pounded southern Japan as residents took refuge from destructive winds, towering waves and storm surges. Airports closed and residents were evacuated from low-lying areas and shorelines as Typhoon Neoguri was passing through the islands comprising the southern Okinawa prefecture. The storm has sustained winds of 108mph per hour and gusts up to 154mph, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. The storm was at its most powerful when passing Okinawa, some 1,600 km (1,000 miles) southwest of Tokyo today. More than 50,000 households in Okinawa lost power and an oil refinery halted operations. One Okinawa resident said the gusts are powerful enough to knock people off their feet.

UK - “Paedophilic interest is natural and normal for human males,” said the presentation. “At least a sizeable minority of normal males would like to have sex with children … Normal males are aroused by children.” Some yellowing tract from the Seventies or early Eighties, era of abusive celebrities and the infamous PIE, the Paedophile Information Exchange? No. Anonymous commenters on some underground website? No again. The statement that paedophilia is “natural and normal” was made not three decades ago but last July. It was made not in private but as one of the central claims of an academic presentation delivered, at the invitation of the organisers, to many of the key experts in the field at a conference held by the University of Cambridge.

EUROPE - The first secretary-general of NATO, Lord Ismay, once said the Western defense alliance was created "to keep the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down". The task facing the European Union now might be described as to keep the British in, the Russians out and the Germans down. Prime Minister David Cameron's demand to redraw Britain's relationship with the EU and put the result to a referendum in 2017 means the next few years are bound to be dogged by haggling over Brussels' powers and about opt-outs for London. If Britain, Europe's third largest economy, main financial center and joint biggest military and diplomatic power, were to become the first country ever to leave the bloc, it would deal a severe blow to itself but also to the EU's global standing.

USA - The geeks worship a machine that has not yet been built. This machine will appear in about 2045 at a moment its worshippers call the Singularity. It will be the last machine we will ever build because, being superintelligent and able to redesign itself to be ever more intelligent, it will do everything we need, including make us medically immortal by curing all our ills, or, perhaps, genuinely immortal by uploading us into itself. Or it will kill us. The mood of the machine is as unpredictable as that of Prince Philip; it may be an Old rather than a New Testament god.

‘Singularity’ is a term derived from physics, where it means the point at the unknowable centre of a black hole where the laws of physics break down. For [Silicon] Valley believers, the tech version of this is where the rules and conventions that have previously ordered human life come to an end. It is the ‘trans-human’ moment at which we transcend our biological destiny.

ISRAEL - On Friday, as throngs marched through the streets of Jerusalem neighborhood Shuafat for the funeral of murdered Arab teen Mohammad Abu Khdair, ISIS style black flags were aloft, Jerusalem Post editor Seth Frantzman reported on Twitter, posting an accompanying picture of the scene. The bloodthirsty terror group has gained prominence in recent months for capturing large swaths of western Iraq after three years of fighting in the ongoing Syrian civil war. ISIS has developed a reputation for particular brutality including beheadings, mass murder and crucifixions. Last week, its flags were seen aloft at the Gaza funeral of an Islamist militant targeted by Israel in an airstrike for his involvement in launching rockets at the Jewish state.

RUSSIA - The current global events clearly demonstrate that the unipolar model of the world has failed, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday. “There can hardly be doubts that the unipolar world model failed. Louder and louder, peoples and countries express their determination to choose their destiny on their own, to preserve their civilizational and cultural identity, which contradicts the West’s attempts to keep dominating in the military sphere, politics, finance and economy, ideology,” Putin said at a meeting with Russian ambassadors and permanent envoys. Putin drew on the fact that Russia’s Western partners have spent the past two decades trying to convince Moscow of their good intentions and readiness to jointly build a strategic partnership, when, in fact, they have expanded NATO and pushed the military-political space they control closer to Russian borders.

CHINA - China designated a clearing bank in Seoul for yuan transactions in South Korea on Friday, coinciding with a visit by President Xi Jinping, as Beijing promotes greater use of its currency overseas, AFP reports. China's central bank has authorised the Bank of Communications, the country's fifth largest lender, to undertake yuan clearing business in the South Korean capital, the People's Bank of China (PBoC) said in a statement. The announcement came as Chinese President Xi Jinping wrapped up a state visit to South Korea on Friday. China is seeking to make the yuan - also known as the renminbi - used more internationally in keeping with the country's status as the world's second biggest economy behind the United States.

VATICAN - Pope Francis says abandoning the traditionally Christian practice of not working on Sundays isn't such a good change. Francis on Saturday traveled to Molise, an agricultural region in the heart of southern Italy where unemployment is chronically high. While he said poor people need employment to have dignity, he disagreed with opening stores and other businesses on Sundays as a way to create jobs. Francis said the priority should be "not economic but human," adding "maybe it's time to ask ourselves if working on Sundays is true freedom." He also said that spending Sundays with family and friends is an "ethical choice" for faithful and non-faithful alike.

GERMANY - The CDU and Green party-affiliated foundations have been holding conferences with prominent experts to continue Germany's campaign by elite circles to promote a more aggressive German global policy. Ultimately, a "public discussion of the security policy's soft and hard factors" must take place, insisted the head of the Policy Department of the German Defense Ministry, Monday at a conference held by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

GERMANY - With some experts warning that the “golden decade” of rapid growth in German-Chinese trade and dealings may be ending, Chancellor Angela Merkel embarks this weekend on her seventh visit to China, accompanied by top people from German business who, surveys indicate, are still markedly more optimistic about China than are their European counterparts. Like many people raised in Communist East Germany, where travel abroad was tightly restricted, Ms Merkel is an avid traveler. As a trained scientist, she is also keenly interested in innovation, and in China she always travels to Beijing and at least one other province for a firsthand look at joint ventures and new Chinese research and enterprises.

GERMANY - An employee of Germany's BND foreign intelligence agency has been arrested on suspicion of spying for the United States, two politicians with knowledge of the affair told Reuters on Friday. The German Federal Prosecutor's office said in a statement that a 31-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of being a foreign spy, but it gave no further details. Investigations were continuing, it said. The case risks further straining ties with Washington which were damaged by revelations last year of mass surveillance of German citizens by the US National Security Agency, including the monitoring of Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone. The man, who is German, has admitted passing to an American contact details about a special German parliamentary committee set up to investigate the spying revelations made by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, the politicians said.

MIDDLE EAST - A group of jihadists claiming to be part of ISIS have vowed to invade Spain along with all other “occupied lands” in a video posted on the web. The men say Spain is the land of their forefathers and that they are prepared to die for their nascent Islamic State. The video of two men claiming to be militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) has taken the Spanish media by storm. The minute-long footage shows them speaking in Spanish, and saying that ISIS will take over Spain. “I tell you, Spain is the land of our forefathers, and, Allah willing, we are going to liberate it, with the might of Allah,” says one of the men. He adds that the group won’t stop at Spain and intends to spread its Islamic Caliphate across the world.

USA - The American city of Phoenix, Arizona, was hit by a massive dust storm on Thursday evening, ahead of the Fourth of July celebrations. The blinding winds left thousands of homes without power and grounded numerous flights at the city's international airport.

GERMANY - Hessy Taft's image appeared on a Nazi family magazine in 1935 and on postcards used throughout the Third Reich. It turns out the Nazis' "perfect Aryan" baby isn't actually, well, Aryan. Hessy Taft, the winner of a 1935 contest commissioned by the Nazis in Germany to find the most beautiful Aryan baby, recently revealed that she is Jewish.