Invited speakers will almost exclusively be supporters of the German government's military policy, including a representative of the "Military Technology and Jobs Working Group," functioning under the auspices of the presidium of the Industrial Union of Metalworkers (IG Metall). In the past, this caucus has repeatedly issued calls for the reorientation of the Bundeswehr into a global intervention army and supported the expansion of German arms exports. Employees of official military policy advisory bodies are also on the list of speakers.

Strong protest against the event has developed. Critics are openly calling this a "slap in the face of the peace and anti-war movement." Michael Sommer, Chair of the German Trade Union Federation (DGB), has invited the members of his organization to a "Peace and Security Policy Workshop" to be held next Wednesday in Berlin, with the intention of "discussing the trade unions' relationship to the military," as Sommer writes in the announcement of the event. The focus will not be on the Bundeswehr's past and current combat operations, which are euphemistically dubbed "international missions."

Even the choice of speakers, to lead the discussion, indicate an unambiguous commitment to the militarization of German foreign policy. Almost all of the speakers support the German government's military policy. Already last February, the DGB leadership had met with the German Minister of Defense, Thomas de Maizière (CDU). This was linked to the announcement of intentions to draw up "a joint declaration" on the Bundeswehr and the trade union's "shared values." It appears that now the ideological foundation must be laid.

Francis said: Divisions among us, but also divisions among the communities: evangelical Christians, orthodox Christians, Catholic Christians, but why divided? We must try to bring about unity. Let me tell you something, today, before leaving home, I spent 40 minutes more or less, half an hour, with an evangelical pastor. And we prayed together, seeking unity.

But we Catholics must pray with each other and other Christians. Pray that the Lord gift us (with) unity! Unity among ourselves! How will we ever have unity among Christians if we are not capable of having it among us Catholics, in the family, how many families fight and split up? Seek unity, unity builds the Church and comes from Jesus Christ. He sends us the Holy Spirit to build unity!

I believe that it is truly important for everyone to confront in dialogue the historical reality of the Reformation, its consequences and the responses it elicited. Catholics and Lutherans can ask forgiveness for the harm they have caused one another and for their offenses committed in the sight of God. Together we can rejoice in the longing for unity which the Lord has awakened in our hearts, and which makes us look with hope to the future.

Of all Christians, Catholics have the highest obligation to work toward healing the divisions - and promoting an authentic path toward Christian unity. There is an adage in the Gospels which has a special application in this arena, "To those to whom much is given, much more will be required" (Luke 12:48). If the fullness of truth subsists in the Catholic Church, (see, n8, Lumen Gentium) that should not make us haughty, but humble in our relationship with other Christians.

As Angela Merkel forms a new coalition government after a third successive election triumph, the conservative chancellor can build on efforts, in place since her first term in 2005, that have increased not just the number of Germans in senior jobs in Brussels but the extent to which they answer to Berlin.

And where that fails to ensure EU policy acceptable to the bloc's biggest economy, Merkel has shown she is prepared to lay down the law in person - as when she demanded an EU retreat this summer from a looming trade war with China that would have hurt the exports of Germany's big car makers and engineering firms.

Its 27 partners can hardly deny that a state which is home to one EU citizen in six and produces a fifth of the bloc's output must have a big say. Berlin's new assertiveness, aided by a widening economic gap it has opened up over struggling allies, is, however, provoking grumbles - though there is little sign yet of a serious challenge to weaken Merkel's grip in Brussels.

The diffuse structure of the European Union does give the 27 other states scope to challenge Germany's economic strategy. But that does not convince European Parliament member Nigel Farage. His UK Independence Party wants Britain, still outside the euro zone, to completely pull out of a European Union in which Farage sees economics ensuring Berlin will call the shots. "Whether Britain is in or out," he said, "Economic policy-making in the euro zone is going to be dominated by Germany."

Although the epicenter of the quake, which registered 3.3. on the Richter Scale, was located in the Egyptian town of Taaba, tremors were registered in the Israeli resort city. No damage or injuries occurred. This is the seventh such mini-earthquake in a week, and Israel has been abuzz with speculation as to whether such a rare string of tremors could portend a much larger earthquake.

On Monday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ordered emergency earthquake drills in schools throughout the country, and Shas MK Eli Yishai, who heads the parliamentary committee charged with home front preparedness, announced a "special meeting in wake of the wave of earthquakes."

In 1927, about 300 people were killed when a quake hit Jerusalem and nearby Jericho. A similar quake in 1837 measuring 7.0 and with an epicentre in northern Israel's Hula Valley, devastated the town of Tzfat (Safed), and killed some 4,000 people.

Alan Johnston BBC News, Rome, reports: When Bishop Tebartz-van Elst flew into Rome last week it was reportedly on a Ryanair flight. Budget travel is perhaps not quite the style of the "bishop of bling", but it was more appropriate given his mission.

He was here to explain to the Pope his $42 million palace renovation job. And waiting for that meeting cannot have been comfortable. Would the Pope mention the bishop's $20,000 bathtub? Or the $34,000 conference table? Everybody knows that building projects can get, well, out of hand. But of all the popes, Francis was least likely to be sympathetic.

At the centre of his message has been the need for the Church to connect to the poor and the deprived. Francis has criticised clerics who live too lavishly. He has told them not to live "like princes", and he has himself chosen to stay in a Vatican guest house rather than move into the very much grander papal apartment.

The banking industry is in absolute chaos as their criminality is being exposed for the entire world to see. The time to have taken your money out of the bank was yesterday. There is very little time before the IMF’s plan to steal 10%, for starters, of all bank accounts in Europe. JPMorgan Chase is banning wire transfers from their bank to foreign banks to prevent American capital flight, which will surely happen as America wakes up to the desperate situation that the banks are in.

The bank is also prohibiting any cash withdrawals of $50,000 or more. This past Friday, HSBC (America) followed suit. It is highly likely that all 5 megabanks will enact the same policies in the near future.

In an upside-down world in which the banks legally own your money, getting your money away from these criminal banks has become an art form. I cannot promise you that you will be able to retrieve all of your assets, however, I can promise you that if you do not act, you will lose everything.

We've managed to get our hands on an updated version of the draft European Council conclusions (which is doing the rounds in Brussels) ahead of the meeting of EU leaders later this week.

And what do you know, the following paragraphs have made it in:-

"The Commission will provide a first overview of the implementation of country-specific recommendations that will be a basis for the monitoring of their implementation. This will also assess growth and jobs enhancing policies and measures, including the performance of labour and product markets, the efficiency of public service, as well as education and innovation in the Euro area. On this basis, work will be carried forward to strengthen economic policy coordination, including on the main features of contractual arrangements and of associated solidarity mechanisms."

It's a vague formulation - and hard to know exactly what it means - but we think it's at least fair to assume that the idea is back on the agenda (our view is it never quite went away). As we've argued repeatedly, the kind of beefed-up supervision and enforcement that the Germans have in mind would most likely require EU treaty change.

The nature, scope and timing of such a Treaty change is anyone's guess at the moment, however.

In fact, when Adam Crain and Chris Sistrunk decided to test some new software they were developing they identified a vulnerability so serious that it could literally blind operational controllers to such an extent that they would be locked out of monitoring systems and unable to maintain grid integrity. The consequences, according to the engineers who note they are in no way security specialists, could be a total downing of the national power grid with nodes across the nation being taken over all at once.

Moreover, the same systems used to maintain the US power grid are also being used in other industries, like water treatment facilities. You’d think that such a vulnerability would be a top priority for the Department of Homeland Security, considering they are spending millions of dollars and promoting their coming Grid Ex exercise in November. But you’d be wrong. The kicker is that when Crain and Sistrunk advised the DHS Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team, they got what essentially amounts to no response. It took Homeland Security a full four months before they even acknowledged the problem. The two engineers who discovered the vulnerability say little is being done.

And when we say deadly, we mean it, because according to a report from the Center for Security Policy presented to Congress in 2010, if our power grid were to be taken offline for an extended period of time, 9 out of 10 Americans would be dead within a year. There would be no way to transport food because gas station pumps would be inoperable. And even if they did work, the commerce systems which makes the exchange of goods possible would be offline. Couple that with water utilities not functioning due to lack of electricity, and we’re talking about a worst-case scenario so bad that this country may never recover.

Former Congressman Roscoe Bartlet has urged those who can to move out of major cities for this reason.

The latest volley, from his new book, “The Map and the Territory,” is a warning that the Fed’s balance sheet expansion — $3.8 trillion and counting — may unleash inflation. “It is easy to contemplate price acceleration, with today’s Federal Reserve balances unchanged, ranging from 3 percent per annum to double digits over the next 5 to 10 years,” he writes.

It’s been a long time since anyone accurately predicted higher inflation. Instead, inflation has sagged to the lowest levels on record. But here’s why Mr Greenspan is worried. Each time the Fed buys a bond, it pays the bank that sells the bond by creating money and putting it into an account that the bank keeps at the Fed. Mr Greenspan’s inflation prediction is based on his estimation of the consequences as that money flows out into the economy.

Benjamin Netanyahu's office had already announced that a meeting would take place during his visit to Italy, reported Haaretz, but the pope has no plans in this regard. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met the Pope during his recent visit to Rome where he received a pen as a gift, with the wish that he will use it to sign a peace agreement with Israel.

According to Haaretz, the Vatican became aware of Netanyahu's visit to Rome and his supposed meeting with Pope Francis through the media. "The Prime Minister's Office worked hard to hold the meeting and to avoid any embarrassment but to no avail," claimed the newspaper. The Vatican informed Israel's ambassador to Italy, Naor Gilon, on Sunday that the prime minister will not meet the Pope; Netanyahu's advisors are said to be "outraged".

Gilon said that the Vatican protocol for meetings is very complex. "To arrange for such a meeting within a week is regarded as an insult, so it has never happened," he explained. Israel Radio reported that a new date for a meeting is to be set "as soon as possible".

A truck was ready. Once in the air, the dirigible balloon would spray 120 litres of fine water droplets into the East Anglia sky, a miniaturised test for a much larger system that would eventually pump out chemical particles to reflect sunlight and, so the scientists calculated, cool the planet. It was to be a momentous day.

Geoengineering – as defined by the Royal Society in 2009 – is the large-scale, technological manipulation of the climate (some call it "planet hacking"). After decades of theorising, the Cambridge group was going to be the first in the West to take research out of doors. But shortly before lift-off, they aborted. There was, they feared, no way of knowing who could use their research, or in what way, and the Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (Spice) team did not want to open a door that might be impossible to close. Little has changed in practical terms since 2011.

Geoengineering technologies are the stuff of Hollywood disaster movies. Researchers have suggested sending a giant glass sunshade into space to reflect light; the eruption of artificial volcanoes, or spraying of sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere; dissolving mountains and putting remains in the sea; and, least dramatically, perhaps, filling the ocean with iron filings to stimulate algae blooms. "People are right to be revolted and alarmed," says Matthew Watson, the head of Spice. "That's a good thing. It should not sound easy. If we do this, it will be the clearest indication we have failed as planetary stewards. It will be a desperate thing to do."

The campaign against America's enemies is silent and precise. Commanders fight without troops. They operate from CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia - their "troops" in front of computer screens in Nevada or New Mexico. Their weapons are unmanned drones. "The CIA, over the last 12 years, has very much been back in the business of killing," said Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Mazzetti in an interview with DW. "Since the September 11 attacks, the CIA has gradually transformed into very much of a paramilitary organization."

Just released in Germany, "The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth" contains evidence gathered by the New York Times journalist via interviews with intelligence operatives and politicians. Mazzetti speaks of a military complex catalysed by developments in drone technology. "It's the military, it's the spy services, it's private companies that have in many ways created this new state where they can carry out these secret missions and secret eavesdropping," he said.

Ben Emmerson, UN special rapporteur, accused the US of challenging international legal norms by advocating the use of lethal force outside war zones. The investigation was launched in January and had been due to be completed by the autumn, offering a review of the legality of drone strikes and an analysis of the number of civilian casualties – totalling almost 500 across the world.

However, Mr Emmerson said gathering direct data on individual drone strikes – which generally occur in remote, hostile locations – had taken longer than expected and his report would not be complete until next year. Instead, he has issued an interim report which is due to be debated at the UN next week.

Ultimately, all of this nuclear radiation will outlive all of us by a very wide margin. They are saying that it could take up to 40 years to clean up the Fukushima disaster, and meanwhile countless innocent people will develop cancer and other health problems as a result of exposure to high levels of nuclear radiation. We are talking about a nuclear disaster that is absolutely unprecedented, and it is constantly getting worse

Conditions in the unit 4 pool, 100 feet from the ground, are perilous, and if any two of the rods touch it could cause a nuclear reaction that would be uncontrollable. The radiation emitted from all these rods, if they are not continually cool and kept separate, would require the evacuation of surrounding areas including Tokyo. Because of the radiation at the site the 6,375 rods in the common storage pool could not be continuously cooled; they would fission and all of humanity will be threatened, for thousands of years.

The MOU builds upon a deal signed in June in the presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, which saw Rosneft receive a $70 billion upfront payment from CNPC for its promise to raise exports by 300,000 barrels per day.

Under terms of the MOU Rosneft will have a controlling stake of 51 percent in the future joint venture, while CNPC will own 49 percent. Rosneft President and Chairman of the Management Board Igor Sechin said, “The memorandum is another step in developing the strategic partnership between Rosneft and CNPC in various areas of cooperation.”

Now that China, flush with cash, has acquired a share in Russia’s upstream activities, it is not likely to be Beijing’s last such deal with Moscow.