UK - Taxes will have to rise unless officials are given new powers to raid people's bank accounts, David Cameron has said. The Treasury select committee warned that allowing HM Revenue and Customs to remove cash from bank accounts without court orders is "very concerning" because of its history of mistakes. The committee said that taxpayers could suffer “serious detriment” if officials are able, either by mistake or through an “abuse” of power, to take money from people who have done no wrong. Mr Cameron yesterday claimed that the alternative was to "put up taxes". Under the planned new measures, tax officials will have an automatic power to take money from a bank account when the holder has failed to act on four formal warnings requiring payment.

LEBANON - A visit planned by the leader of Lebanon's largest Christian sect to Jerusalem to meet Pope Francis has unleashed a barrage of criticism in the Arab country, which remains at war with Israel. Cardinal Bechara Rai, head of Lebanon's Maronite Catholic church, will be the first leader of the church to visit Jerusalem since the Arab part of the contested city was captured by Israel in a 1967 war. Francis will start a three-day pilgrimage to Jordan, the West Bank and Israel on May 24. Over the past decades, Israel has invaded Lebanon several times, occupying part of the neighboring country's territory for 18 years until it withdrew in 2000. The two countries have not signed a peace agreement, and fighting breaks out regularly.

USA - Church officials say they will “combat evil” by hosting a positive worship service to counter a Harvard group’s Satanic mass planned for Monday evening. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston will host a Eucharistic procession from MIT to a nearby church for an hour of prayer, The Boston Globe reports. The religious procession will end up at St Paul’s Parish in Harvard Square, just a 10-minutes walk from the Queen’s Head Pub in Memorial Hall where the Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club is set to hold a “black mass.” A black mass is a ritual performed as a parody of the Roman Catholic Mass. In an official statement, the Archdiocese said it fears that people who partake in the ceremony are “underestimating the power of Satan.”

USA - Senator Ted Cruz released a list that details 76 different ways President Obama and his administration have committed “lawless” actions: “The Legal Limit Report No. 4: The Obama Administration’s Abuse of Power.” In it, he includes this brief statement, reported by The Blaze: “Rather than honor [his] duty, President Obama has openly defied it by repeatedly suspending, delaying and waiving portions of the laws that he is charged to enforce. When President Obama disagreed with federal immigration laws, he instructed the Justice Department to cease enforcing the laws. He did the same thing with federal welfare law, drug laws and the federal Defense of Marriage Act.”

SCOTLAND - Scotland’s health boards are facing an angry backlash from religious groups after lobbying ministers to water down protections for teachers and parents opposed to their children learning about gay marriage. A campaign group that includes the Catholic Church and the Kirk [Church of Scotland] accused NHS chiefs of displaying “contempt” for traditional family values after the Daily Telegraph disclosed details of their correspondence with the Scottish Government. The row has broken out over new guidance ministers are preparing on sex education lessons that would allow teachers or pupils to opt out on the grounds of “conscience”. In written submissions to ministers, the country’s largest health boards have argued that all pupils should learn about gay marriage regardless of their parents’ or teachers’ religious beliefs.

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.