SAUDI ARABIA - A Saudi Arabian court has sentenced the editor of a website that discussed religion in the ultra-conservative Islamic kingdom to 10 years in jail and 1,000 lashes. His punishment comes shortly after Saudi Arabia criticised Norway's human rights record and accused it of not doing enough to counter criticism of the prophet Mohammed. The gulf state also demanded all criticism of religion and of the Prophet Mohammed be made illegal in Norway. In a string of royal decrees and an overarching new piece of legislation to deal with terrorism generally, the Saudi King Abdullah has clamped down on all forms of political dissent and protests that could "harm public order". Saudi Arabia also announced in March it intended to close the local office of the Qatari-owned al Jazeera satellite television over Qatar’s backing for the Muslim Brotherhood, local media said.

DENMARK - Austria won this year's Eurovision Song Contest early Sunday with "Rise Like a Phoenix" sung by bearded drag queen Conchita Wurst. The 25-year-old performer, whose real name is Tom Neuwirth, took the Eurovision crown in Copenhagen despite initial expectations that the eye-catching performance would be too controversial in socially conservative countries. "We are unity, and we are unstoppable," she said after winning the glitzy competition with 290 points compared with 238 points for runner-up the Netherlands, in what Eurovision fans had anticipated would be a more closely fought race.

VATICAN - Pope Francis called Friday for governments to redistribute wealth to the poor in a new spirit of generosity to help curb the "economy of exclusion" that is taking hold today. Francis made the appeal during a speech to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the heads of major UN agencies who met in Rome this week. Latin America's first pope has frequently lashed out at the injustices of capitalism and the global economic system that excludes so much of humanity, though his predecessors have voiced similar concerns. On Friday, Francis called for the United Nations to promote a "worldwide ethical mobilization" of solidarity with the poor in a new spirit of generosity. During the meeting, Ban invited Francis to speak to the United Nations. The Vatican hasn't confirmed any such trip, but Francis is widely expected to visit the US in September 2015…

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu reportedly revealed at a Likud conference on Wednesday some remarkable facets of the Basic Law he submitted last Thursday, which would enshrine Israel's status as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Netanyahu told the head of Likud's hareidi division Yaakov Vider at the conference that he intends to make the Hebrew calendar, which is based on Jewish law, the official calendar of Israel, reports Kikar Hashabat. The new law also would establish the Talmud, the core work of Jewish law, as an official basis for Israeli state law.

RUSSIA - While Putin said the exercise had been planned back in November, it comes as relations between Russia and the West have plunged to their lowest point since the Cold War over Ukraine. Putin, speaking from the Defense Ministry's headquarters where he oversaw the exercise along with leaders of several ex-Soviet nations which are members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, said that the maneuvers involved the military across the entire Russian territory, including the nation's nuclear forces.

EUROPE - Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, raised the prospect of monetary easing as early as next month and said the strong euro was a "cause for serious concern". Speaking after the central bank had held interest rates, he said: "The governing council is comfortable with acting next time but before we want to see the staff projections that will come out in early June… There is consensus about being dissatisfied with the projected path of inflation. So there is a consensus with not being resigned to expecting this. We have a consensus about action, but after seeing the staff projections in early June."

UK - Legalising assisted suicide in the UK would open a “Pandora’s box” with “horrible consequences” for the frail, elderly and sick, Pope Francis’s personal representative has insisted. In a rare public intervention into a domestic political matter, the Apostolic Nuncio to Great Britain, Archbishop Antonio Mennini, condemned moves led by Lord Falconer, the former Lord Chancellor, to relax the euthanasia laws as an attack on “human life as a gift from God”. And he pointedly offered them the personal support of the Pope on the issue, setting the Church on course for another battle with politicians in the wake of the bruising encounters over issues such as gay marriage. Last night supporters of a change in the law claimed that the Pope’s representative was “on the wrong side of British public opinion”.

VATICAN - The decline of religious belief in the West and the growth of secularism has “opened the window” to black magic, Satanism and belief in the occult, the organisers of a conference on exorcism have said. The six-day meeting in Rome aims to train about 200 Roman Catholic priests from more than 30 countries in how to cast out evil from people who believe themselves to be in thrall to the Devil. The conference, “Exorcism and Prayers of Liberation”, has also attracted psychiatrists, sociologists, doctors and criminologists in what the Church called a “multi-disciplinary” approach to exorcisms. The abandonment of religion “inevitably leads people to ask questions about the existence of evil and its origins”, he told Adnkronos, an Italian news agency.

USA - A re-enactment of a Black Mass celebrating Satan is scheduled to take place at Harvard University on Monday evening. It has outraged the Catholic Church, but the group holding the event says it’s educational.

The Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club is hosting the Satanic Temple from New York. The Black Mass is scheduled for Monday night in the basement of Memorial Hall. In a recent statement, Pope Francis warned of the danger of being naïve about or underestimating the power of Satan, whose evil is too often tragically present in our midst. We call upon all believers and people of good will to join us in prayer for those who are involved in this event, that they may come to appreciate the gravity of their actions, and in asking Harvard to disassociate itself from this activity.

USA - In the world of questionable and sometimes downright silly Bible translations, one would think that it couldn’t get any worse. After all, we’ve seen the “In da beginnin’ Big Daddy created da heaven an’ da earth” Ebonics Bible, as well as the “Apostle’s Log” Star Trek English paraphrase Bible. In a more serious effort, the New Oxford Annotated Bible was created in part by pro-”gay” and feminist scholars in order to set forth a more “gay” revisionist interpretation of Scripture.

THAILAND - Look on and despair. A decade ago Thailand was a shining example - rare proof that in South-East Asia a vibrant democracy could go hand-in-hand with a thriving economy. Contrast that with Thailand on May 7th, left in disarray after the Constitutional Court demanded that the prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, step down with nine members of her cabinet over her decision to remove the country’s head of national security in 2011, in favour of a relative. For all the pretence of due legal process and distaste at Ms Yingluck’s nepotism, this was not an offence that merited the ousting of a prime minister. Instead, the ruling is a measure of quite how far Thailand has fallen, how deeply it is divided and how badly its institutions are broken. Unless Thais step back from the brink, their country risks falling into chaos and anarchy, or outright violence.

USA - A warning from US scientists that Oklahoma may be hit by a major earthquake has caused a run on insurance policies for tremors in the heartland state, adding to the woes of residents already in the firing line of devastating tornadoes. Oklahoma City resident Mark Myers said that after the USGS issued their warning, he called his insurance agent to look into coverage. "When you see a warning for a major earthquake in Oklahoma, which I understand is pretty rare, it makes you aware of what could happen," Myers said just after speaking to an agent. Tornadoes have been a persistent concern for Oklahomans, with an average of 50 hitting a year, usually during the March to August season, causing billions of dollars in damage. But there has also been a lot of shaking, with 183 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater on the Richter scale occurring in Oklahoma from October 2013 through April 14, the USGS said.

TEXAS, USA - There have been more than 300 earthquakes reported in Parker County since December, according to just-published research conducted by an earthquake study team. In preliminary findings released Wednesday, the team reported that the quakes show a complex fault system in the area near Reno and Azle, which started experiencing quakes for the first time in November. The progress report from the SMU North Texas Earthquake Study said the relation of the quakes to two nearby waste-water injection wells remains a major question. Preliminary locations for the earthquakes show them occurring within one to two kilometers of the well sites.

ACAPULCO, Mexico - A strong earthquake shook the southern Pacific coast of Mexico as well as the capital and several inland states Thursday, sending frightened people into unseasonal torrential rains that were also bearing down on the coast. The 6.4-magnitude quake in southern Guerrero state was centered about 9 miles (15 kilometers) north of Tecpan de Galeana, according to the US Geological Survey, and was felt about 171 miles (277 kilometers) miles away in Mexico City, where office workers streamed into the streets away from high-rise buildings. There were no reports of injuries or major damage, though a section of highway collapsed in Tecpan, near the epicenter. The town shook ferociously, causing a "wave of panic" and some roofs to cave in, Mayor Crisoforo Otero Heredia said.

VATICAN - Pope Francis received the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church in audience on May 8 and said that the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christian unity. The Pontiff’s remarks come one year before the centenary of the Armenian genocide, in which an estimated 1.5 million Armenians perished at the hands of the Ottoman Turkish regime.