EUROPE - George Soros is set to ignite a fresh row over Europe this week with the launch of a new book in which he alleges that “self-righteous” and “hypocritical” German economic policy is a threat to the European Union. The billionaire investor tells Dr Gregor Peter Schmitz in a series of interviews collected in “The Tragedy of the European Union” that Europe is now dominated by tensions between “creditor” and “debtor” nations.

EUROPE - George Soros, the billionaire investor, believes the banking sector is a “parasite” holding back the economic recovery and an “incestuous” relationship with regulators means little has been done to resolve the issues behind the 2008 crisis.

EUROPE - With European Parliament elections scheduled for May, the European Commission is set to get a new president. Some member states have growing concerns about the frontrunners - and now tempers are getting heated.

AUSTRALIA - A senior government staffer who demanded a new healthy food rating website be taken down is married to the head of a lobbying outfit that works for the junk food industry, it has been revealed. In senate question time on Tuesday, Assistant Health Minister Fiona Nash admitted that both she and her chief-of-staff, Alastair Furnival, had personally intervened to insist health department staff pull down the new “health star rating” site on the day it was launched.

ISRAEL - An ongoing partial strike of the Foreign Ministry may make Pope Francis's first visit to Israel in May "impossible," according to Yigal Palmor, a spokesman of the ministry. "Imminent planned visits by foreign leaders, including (British Prime Minister) David Cameron next week or the pope in May, will be complicated, and perhaps impossible," Palmor told AFP on Friday. The strike stepped up a notch on Tuesday, potentially shutting off the state to diplomatic visits. The pope announced his visit in January. In response to the strike the Vatican has clarified it has no plans to cancel the trip. Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi noted the strike "is likely to cause complications in preparing for the trip. There's nothing more to it."

MIDDLE EAST - Palestinian sources report that at a meeting that was held about a week ago in Paris between Secretary of State John Kerry and Chairman of the Palestinian Authority Abu Mazen, the Palestinian leader threatened to ‘turn over tables’ and sent Kerry back to the United States to draw up a new peace proposal. Senior officials in the PA asserted, “The American proposal is outrageous”. According to the newspaper [“Al-Quds”], the American proposal included the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, the maintenance of Israeli control over the Jordan Valley, and the necessity of the presence of an international security force in the new Palestinian state as its conditions. In addition, Kerry pressured Abu Mazen to allow for the annexation of 10 Israeli settlements as part of the land swaps within the agreement.

USA - Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee slammed the White House for its weakness on foreign policy, saying the United States' standing in the world has diminished under President Barack Obama and its next leader faces a tough task in rebuilding America's might. He pointed to the current situation in Ukraine during his 10-minute speech at the Conservative Political Action Committee gathering in Maryland, and blasted Obama for allowing Russian President Vladimir Putin to take advantage of our weakness. He said, "No one trusts us, no one listens to us, no one respects us, no one fears us." Huckabee, who is weighing a possible presidential campaign in 2016, says the United States has reduced its military power and other nations have taken advantage of it.

LIBYA - Western countries voiced concern on Thursday that tensions in Libya could slip out of control in the absence of a functioning political system, and they urged the government and rival factions to start talking. Two-and-a-half years after the fall of former leader Muammar Gaddafi, the oil-rich North African state is struggling to contain violence between rival forces, with Islamist militants gaining an ever-stronger grip on the south of the country. "The situation in Libya is very worrying," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters on the margins of a conference in Rome to discuss the Libyan crisis. He said the uncertain security position, especially in the south, worsened an unstable political situation which required Libyan political forces to come together to reach a solution.

NORTH KOREA - China declared a "red line" on North Korea on Saturday, saying that China will not permit chaos or war on the Korean peninsula, and that peace can only come through denuclearization. China is North Korea's most important diplomatic and economic supporter, though Beijing's patience with Pyongyang has been severely tested following three nuclear tests and numerous bouts of saber rattling, including missile launches. "The Korean peninsula is right on China's doorstep. We have a red line, that is, we will not allow war or instability on the Korean peninsula," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters on the sidelines of China's annual largely rubber-stamp parliament.

USA - The Dalai Lama delivered the opening prayer in the US Senate Thursday morning, noting that he is a "simple Buddhist monk - so pray to Buddha and all other gods." He read his prayers in both English and his native tongue: "With our thoughts, we make our world. Our mind is centered and precedes our deeds. Speak or act with a pure mind. And happiness will follow you, like a shadow that never leaves. May there be joy in the world, with bountiful harvest and spiritual wealth," he said, when he reverted to English. "May every good fortune come to be. And may all our wishes be fulfilled."

GERMANY - School students should be given a "European Union education" in the classroom to tackle "ignorance" and growing public Euro-scepticism, according to an election manifesto signed by Angela Merkel and eight other of Europe's leaders. The European People’s Party (EPP), the EU’s biggest political grouping, is convinced such a programme would improve the public image of Brussels, which has never been lower. Its manifesto for May’s European elections calls for the introduction of “EU education in schools across Europe in order to prepare the next generation for future challenges and to nurture a European approach”.

ISRAEL - A close aid to Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said on Thursday that the gaps between Israeli and PA negotiators only have widened in seven months of talks. Quoted by The Associated Press (AP), Mohammed Shtayyeh said an extension of talks appears unlikely after what is bound to be a missed April 29 deadline for a framework deal.

UK - The links between Government ministers and food manufacturers, and indeed between scientists who are supposed to advise the Government and the food manufacturers, are nothing short of astonishing. For these are the same food manufacturers who have been adding extra sugar to processed foods, confectionery and fizzy drinks for decades. It is the closeness of those links that are widely blamed for a compulsory food traffic-light system — an idea once enthusiastically championed by the Food Standards Agency and designed to give shoppers an idea of the nutritional value (or not) of the item they were about to buy — quietly dying a death soon after the Coalition came to power.

UK - The shrinking value of money means that £9.48 in 1973 would have the same spending power as £100 in your wallet today. An analysis of retail prices found the cost of a pint of lager is 20 times what it was 40 years ago – from 14p to £2.87 now. A loaf of bread is now priced at 12 times the 11p it was in 1973, while the price of a pint of milk has risen around sevenfold, from 6p to 46p. A detached house would set a 1970s buyer back £16,980, but a family now looking for a similar home faces paying 18 times this, at £305,391. Meanwhile, the price of putting fuel in your car has risen 17 times since the early 1970s. A litre of diesel’s price has grown to around £1.41, from 8p in 1973. Overall, the value of money has dropped by 91 per cent over the last 40 years, according to Lloyds Bank’s analysis of Office for National Statistics figures.

USA - The nation’s top military commander painted a dark picture Tuesday of future US defense capabilities clouded by shrinking Pentagon budgets and adversaries’ technological advances that he said would erode American battlefield superiority. Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, provided his sobering views as part of the Quadrennial Defense Review, a congressionally mandated evaluation of US military strength issued every four years. Dempsey predicted that it would become increasingly difficult to balance the competing demands of protecting allies abroad, securing Americans at home and deterring future wars.