Human rights organizations and groups representing victims of clerical abuse welcomed the hearing as the first occasion the Vatican has had to publicly defend its record. “It’s a moment that has given hope and encouragement to victims across the globe,” Barbara Blaine, president of the Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said in Geneva ahead of the hearing.

Amid the shake-up launched by Pope Francis in the 10 months since he took office, rights groups also saw Thursday’s hearing as an occasion that could shed light on the pontiff’s approach to dealing with the clerical abuse scandal. Pope Francis announced last month the creation of a new committee to tackle clerical abuse but has so far said little on the scandal that rocked the Roman Catholic Church around the world.

Written answers from the Vatican emphasized the distinction between the Holy See and the Catholic Church and said that although it encouraged adherence to the principles of the convention globally, it was responsible only for implementing the convention in the territory of the Vatican City State.

“It was quite shocking. It was a pretty direct, pretty blunt effort to sidestep the questions,” Pam Spees, an attorney with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which is seeking to hold Vatican officials responsible for sexual abuse crimes, said in an interview.

The exercise launched on January 10 is being held in the border region between the Changbai mountain and Heilongjiang river, the paper said. The drill is a normal military exercise to train soldiers to fight in winter and long-range conditions, according to national state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV). However, a source from the People's Liberation Army said that it is very rare to see 100,000 military personnel mobilized for a regular exercise. The 39th Army Group has only just completed its "Iron Flow 134" exercise in the region late last year, the source added.

Chinese authorities have declared that no civilian vessels are allowed to enter the waters of the Bohai Strait and northern part of the Yellow Sea between January 10-17 due to the military operation. Observers claim that the PLA chose to launch the military exercises after the execution of Jang Sung-taek, former vice chairman of North Korean National Defense Commission, by order of North Korea's supreme leader Kim Jong-un. The latest political struggle and execution in the reclusive nation has concerned many in China as Jang was in charge of economic affairs and cooperation with China.

The proposals state that there will be no legal requirement that a woman must consult a doctor before terminating a foetus. MPs and campaign groups said the proposals for private clinics rendered meaningless the central safeguard of the 1967 Abortion Act — that two doctors must authorise a termination.

They claim that the destruction of a foetus will be downgraded to a trivial procedure usually performed by a nurse. Details of the proposals emerged as ministers admitted that fewer than half of women who have abortions now see either of the doctors face-to-face before being granted approval.

That amounts to more than 96,000 abortions a year in England and Wales being signed off by doctors who have never met the patient.

"I wonder if we could be in the very early stages of a redistribution of wealth from capital back to mass income through government policies, whether it be from taxes or things being done to boost minimum wages," O'Neill told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" on Wednesday. "But obviously this is something else just as human beings, never mind investors, that we all have to watch closely."

Citing class tensions in Chile, where income inequality runs rampant and has spurred heavy tax reform proposals, O'Neill said talk of wealth concentrating among the world's elite has become "de rigueur" in the United Kingdom. Most people haven't seen their incomes rise in tandem with surging stock markets, he said. "The elitist part of the world is still benefiting," O'Neill told CNBC.

O'Neill's comments come as income inequality becomes a hot-button issue across the globe. US lawmakers are debating whether to raise the federal minimum wage; an unsuccessful measure to cap CEO pay in Switzerland made headlines last year; and Pope Francis has gained popularity by sharply criticizing "trickle-down" economics.

Aborting babies because they are female has been widespread in India and China for generations: there are as many as 120 boys for every 100 girls there. Now the practice has come to distort British demography – and values. Sex-selective abortion remains a crime in Britain, but, as the Telegraph investigation last year revealed, it is increasingly common. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has ruled that guidance for doctors in this area should be updated – but did not prosecute the two doctors exposed in the Telegraph investigation.

When parents can abort a baby because it's a girl, they are guilty of the worst kind of sexism. Rape, porn, the tyranny of beauty that compels little girls to perform plastic surgery to attain perfection: these are nothing in comparison to the mindset that will not allow for girls to be conceived in the first place.

Our daughters – and not just in immigrant communities – are learning that a girl's life is worthless. Feminists should be up in arms about this. They are not. While they have fought tooth and nail the sexist app that allows little girls to perform plastic surgery on a Barbie, most have stayed silent on a far worse crime against women.

So far, talks are progressing to the point that Russia could purchase up to 500,000 barrels a day of Iranian oil in exchange for Russian equipment and goods, according to Reuters. "We are concerned about these reports and Secretary (of State John) Kerry directly expressed this concern with (Russian) Foreign Minister (Sergei) Lavrov… If the reports are true, such a deal would raise serious concerns as it would be inconsistent with the terms of the P5+1 agreement with Iran and could potentially trigger US sanctions," Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, told Reuters.

Russian purchases of 500,000 bpd [barrels per day] of Iranian crude would lift Iran's oil exports by 50% and infuse the struggling economy with some $1.5 billion a month, some sources say. Since sanctions were slapped on Iran in July 2012, exports have fallen by half and Iran is losing up to $5 billion per month in revenues.

Missing from the list? Germany. All of this commemoration has proven tricky for the nation on the other side of the battle lines. "The German government is fundamentally uninterested in marking this important anniversary," Gerd Krumeich, a historian at Dusseldorf University, said. "And this reflects the mentality of most Germans today. They don’t seem to feel that the war had anything to do with Germany even though almost 2 million of our soldiers died in the trenches."

British Prime Minister David Cameron has added to the Germans discomfiture. Britain is spending some $80 million dollars on commemorative concerts, school visits to battlefields and other events. Cameron says Britain and its allies were fighting a just war against German aggression. Many historians agree.

"The Germans fought a war of conquest," said military historian Garry Sheffield of Wolverhampton University. "And the British and the French found themselves fighting a defensive war against an aggressive neighbor, bent on achieving hegemony in Europe."

These words have an uncomfortable resonance today.

Since becoming pope less than a year ago, Francis has shifted personnel in important Vatican departments, placing his picks in key positions while signalling that he intends to crack down on the intrigues and disarray that plagued the Vatican bureaucracy under the shy, aloof Benedict.

The Vatican Bank, officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion, has been under scrutiny for years, amid suspicions that some accounts might be fronts for illegal interests. European regulators are pushing the secretive bank to become more transparent and adhere to international banking standards, a process that began under Benedict.

Shortly after he announced his surprise resignation last February, Benedict approved new five-year terms for the existing five-man committee overseeing the bank, including Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, then the secretary of state, the Vatican’s second-ranking official. On Wednesday, Francis retained only one of those five — Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran — while replacing Cardinal Bertone with Pietro Parolin, the man who also replaced him as secretary of state.

Francis’ move comes a month before cardinals from around the world will come to the Vatican for a consistory to witness the formal appointment of new cardinals and discuss church affairs. On Sunday, Francis designated his first group of new cardinals, with a majority coming from outside Europe.

While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the NSA has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet, according to NSA documents, computer experts and American officials.

The technology, which the agency has used since at least 2008, relies on a covert channel of radio waves that can be transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards inserted surreptitiously into the computers. In some cases, they are sent to a briefcase-size relay station that intelligence agencies can set up miles away from the target.

German media reports of an impasse at US-German talks to avert spying between allies prompted several senior German politicians on Tuesday to suggest diplomatic and economic pressure on Washington. Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere however said that the talks were continuing, telling journalists at a Berlin press conference that negotiations remained confidential.

Stephan Mayer, the new internal affairs spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative parliamentary group, told Reuters on Tuesday her government should consider withholding contracts with US firms that operate in Germany. Mayer said if the talks failed then Germany must contemplate whether "US firms receive government contracts from the German side or public institutions."

"The Americans understand one language very well, and that is the language of business," Mayer said, adding that such a deal could not be seen in isolation from current EU-US free-trade negotiations. The Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung quoted a German source close to the 'no-spying' talks as saying: "We're getting nothing." The German public broadcaster NDR jointly reported that German delegation sources had almost lost hope that an agreement would emerge.

Christians are facing a new age of “martyrdom” across much of the world, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said. But he insisted that religion is often just a “pretext” for violence and not the real cause. He made his remarks at the end of a two-day visit with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholemew I, the most senior cleric in the eastern Orthodox church.

His comments in a city which has in the past been the capital of both the Christian and Muslim worlds underline the significance he attaches to the threat to Christians in the region, an issue the Prince of Wales also singled out last month.

Run by a fast-growing company called BGI, this facility has become the world's largest centre for the cloning of pigs. The technology involved is not particularly novel - but what is new is the application of mass production.

The first shed contains 90 animals in two long rows. They look perfectly normal, as one would expect, but each of them is carrying cloned embryos. Many are clones themselves. This place produces an astonishing 500 cloned pigs a year: China is exploiting science on an industrial scale.

The scientist in charge, Dr Yutao Du, explains the technique in a way that leaves me reeling. "We can do cloning on a very large scale," she tells me, "30-50 people together doing cloning so that we can make a cloning factory here." A cloning factory - an incredible notion borrowed straight from science fiction. But here in Shenzhen, in what was an old shoe factory, this rising power is creating a new industry.

"We can't go on like this," he is due to say at a conference organised by two eurosceptic groups. It comes after the Tory leadership rejected a call from 95 of its MPs to allow Parliament to block EU laws. Earlier this week William Hague the foreign secretary said the European Union's rules had to be followed by all its members and the backbenchers' plan was unworkable.

But addressing eurosceptic think tank Open Europe and the Fresh Start group of MPs set up by Tories keen to see reform, Mr Osborne will say he understands the need for change. "The biggest economic risk facing Europe doesn't come from those who want reform and renegotiation," he will say. "It comes from a failure to reform and renegotiate. It is the status quo which condemns the people of Europe to an ongoing economic crisis and continuing decline." He will argue there is a "simple choice for Europe: reform or decline".

In a sign he believes spending on social security is too high not just in the UK but across Europe, he will claim: "Europe accounts for just over 7% of the world's population, 25% of its economy, and 50% of global social welfare spending." Echoing the Tories' 2010 election campaign slogan he will say: "We can't go on like this."

But according to court documents filed in 2011 by the Trustee of the Madoff victims’ fund, Irving Picard, this was not a simple case of poor risk management at JPMorgan. This was an operation structured like those Russian nesting dolls, with the Ponzi scheme as the outside doll with many more frauds layered inside the big one.

After reading the documents released by the Justice Department in connection with the settlement, the Los Angeles Times asked in a photo caption of a smirking Madoff outside of Federal Court: “Bernie Madoff: Was he part of the JPMorgan ring, or was JPMorgan part of his ring?”

According to the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), the Justice Department prosecutors who settled the case against JPMorgan Chase used the investigative material from Picard to bring their charges and settle the case. Those court filings show layers upon layers of frauds within the Ponzi scheme.

The most accurate simulation of the human brain to date has been carried out in a Japanese supercomputer, with a single second’s worth of activity from just one per cent of the complex organ taking one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers 40 minutes to calculate.

Researchers used the K computer in Japan, currently the fourth most powerful in the world, to simulate human brain activity. The computer has 705,024 processor cores and 1.4 million GB of RAM, but still took 40 minutes to crunch the data for just one second of brain activity.

The project, a joint enterprise between Japanese research group RIKEN, the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University and Forschungszentrum Jülich, an interdisciplinary research center based in Germany, was the largest neuronal network simulation to date. It used the open-source Neural Simulation Technology (NEST) tool to replicate a network consisting of 1.73 billion nerve cells connected by 10.4 trillion synapses.

While significant in size, the simulated network represented just one per cent of the neuronal network in the human brain. Rather than providing new insight into the organ, the project’s main goal was to test the limits of simulation technology and the capabilities of the K computer.