“Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world,” he wrote. “This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.”

He couldn't be much clearer. The pope has taken a firm political stance against right-leaning, pro-free market economic policies, and his condemnation appears to be largely pointed at Europe and the United States.

Taken in the context of the last half-century of Roman Catholicism, this is a radical move. Fifty years ago, around the time of the Second Vatican Council, Church leaders quietly declared a very different economic enemy: communism. But Pope Francis’s communitarian, populist message shows just how far the Church has shifted in five decades — and how thoroughly capitalism has displaced communism as a monolithic political philosophy.

We need to ask two critical questions: What will the Saudis do now? What will the Israelis do now?

The Saudis have been signaling in recent weeks that they are losing confidence in their alliance with the US, they are increasingly prepared to buy nuclear weapons from Pakistan, and they might even create a tacit alliance with Israel and the Gulf states as a bulwark against Iran. Is all that bluster, or is Riyadh serious?

Meanwhile, the initial consensus among most Mideast analysts is that Israel is now constrained from launching a pre-emptive military strike lest the Netanyahu government risk a massive backlash from the international community that has just agreed to an “interim” agreement with Iran, pending a “comprehensive” agreement in 2014. But this deal makes a preemptive strike more likely, and possibly even inevitable, especially if the Saudis will help. Is this true, or just the bluster of those frustrated by what they perceive as the world’s betrayal?

I’m deeply concerned that the world powers just let themselves be hoodwinked by the mullahs in Iran, and that the world has suddenly become a much more dangerous place, with Iran in a better position to build and deploy nuclear weapons. There are many variables here. And there are likely to be many twists and turns on the road ahead.

This is despite the deal Tehran signed with world powers over the weekend. According to a fact sheet released by the White House, as part of the deal agreed to in Geneva, Iran “committed to no further advances of its activities at Arak and to halt progress on its plutonium track.”

However, Iran has disputed the version of the agreement put out by Washington, and some experts have said loopholes in the text could allow the Iranians to continue construction offsite and then install components there later. The Arak facility became a sticking point in negotiations in a previous round of negotiations with Iran earlier in November, with France reportedly scuppering a deal with Iran because its terms vis-à-vis Arak were unsatisfactory.

Zarif also said that Iran would continue to enrich uranium at levels from 3.5 to 5 percent, but would not construct new enrichment sites, according to Press TV. Iran and the P5+1 nations, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, reached an interim deal Sunday dubbed the Joint Plan of Action whereby Iran agreed to curb much of its nuclear activity for six months, during which the sides will negotiate a final agreement.

Brigadier General Hossein Salami, the lieutenant commander of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), made the critical weapons announcement just days after Iran and the West signed a deal aimed at curbing the country’s nuclear activities. Salami claimed that “Iran is among the only three world countries enjoying an indigenous ballistic missile technology,” according to the state-run Fars News Agency.

“Many countries may have access to cruise missiles technology, but when it comes to ballistic missiles, I am confident that only the US and the [former] Soviet Union could master this technology, and now we can announce that we own this technology as well,” Salami told Fars. The IRGC leader said that Iran is quickly developing advanced military know-how.

“While we did not have any knowledge about drones, we have developed and acquired drones that travel 2,000 kilometers, conduct their operations, and then land in our desirable regions,” he was quoted as saying. Iran’s claim to ballistic missiles would be a major development for a country known to use its military machinery as a means of intimidating its regional neighbors.

Former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said Iran’s ballistic missile announcement is no surprise. “Iran’s ballistic missile program has always been to provide the delivery vehicles for nuclear warheads,” Bolton said. “The timing of the IRGC announcement is no coincidence.”

US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel assured his Japanese counterpart in a phone call that the two nations' defense pact covers the small islands where China established a new airspace defense zone last week and commended Tokyo "for exercising appropriate restraint," a Pentagon spokesman said.

China's declaration raised the stakes in a territorial standoff between Beijing and Tokyo over the area, which includes the tiny uninhabited islands known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China. The United States defied China's demand that airplanes flying near the islands identify themselves to Chinese authorities, flying two unarmed B-52 bombers over the islands on Tuesday without informing Beijing.

It was a sharp reminder to China that the United States still maintains a large military presence in the region despite concerns among US allies that President Barack Obama's "pivot to Asia" strategy has borne little fruit. In a previously announced trip, Vice President Joe Biden will visit China, Japan and South Korea next week. He will seek to ease tensions heightened by China's declaration, senior administration officials said.

Washington does not take a position on the sovereignty of the islands but recognizes that Tokyo has administrative control over them and the United States is therefore bound to defend Japan in the event of an armed conflict.

Local media reported that although China’s air defence zone was aimed at Japan, it turned Korea into a "piggy in the middle" as Beijing tries to expand its defence zone to the east and Tokyo to the west. “Korea has become sandwiched [between Beijing and Tokyo] as China and Japan flex their muscles,” said a report in the conservative Seoul-based newspaper JoongAng Ilbo.

On Thursday, South Korea’s foreign minister Yun Byung-se said the issue of China and Japan’s ADIZ had emerged as a situation that further intensified tensions in Northeast Asia. China’s air defence zone overlaps with some 3,000 square kilometres of South Korea’s and Seoul has told Beijing that it cannot accept what it sees as Beijing’s unilateral decision.

The inclusion of a disputed rock, known as Ieodo, that is controlled by Seoul but also claimed by Beijing as Suyan Rock, in China’s zone has also caused an outcry in South Korea. Korea’s defence ministry announced that it would consider adding Ieodo into its own defence zone, which is not sovereign airspace but serves as a buffer for the military to respond to potentially hostile aircraft.

The impact of most of these “chemicals of emerging concern” on the health of people and aquatic life remains unclear. Nevertheless, the commission report concludes that better water treatment is needed. “The compounds show up in low levels – parts per billion or parts per trillion – but aquatic life and humans aren’t exposed to just one at a time, but a whole mix,” said Antonette Arvai, physical scientist at the International Joint Commission and the lead author of the study. “We need to find which of these chemicals might hurt us.”

More than 1,400 wastewater treatment plants in the United States and Canada discharge 4.8 billion gallons of treated effluent into the Great Lakes basin every day, according to the study. The scientists reviewed 10 years of data from wastewater treatment plants worldwide to see how well they removed 42 compounds that are increasingly showing up in the Great Lakes.

Six chemicals were detected frequently and had a low rate of removal in treated effluent: an herbicide, an anti-seizure drug, two antibiotic drugs, an antibacterial drug and an anti-inflammatory drug.

On Friday night, a group called Western Maryland: A New State Initiative met to discuss the secession of Western Maryland. They say their mission is “to form a new state comprised of Maryland’s five western counties.”

The Washington Times reported, “People are feeling ‘the pinch’ of overbearing state regulations from the largely Democratic majority in Maryland. Western Maryland is a more conservative segment of the state, and their views are well reflected in their website which points to gun control regulations and high taxes as the primary grievances of the citizenry.”

Western Maryland’s five counties, Allegany, Carroll, Frederick, Garrett, and Washington, only make up 11 percent of the state. Some Colorado residents are also interested in seceding. Conservative citizens dislike the anti-gun legislation that plagues the state — some are also concerned by the fact that marijuana and gay marriage is legal.

It is unlikely that either Maryland or Colorado’s secession movements will be successful — in order to do this, the state legislatures would have to approve it and Congress would need to recognize the new, independent states. However, this growing movement does demonstrate a significant polarization of ideologies in America.

In a decision buried in routine business in the Canada Gazette, Environment Canada said it had granted a US biotechnology firm, AquaBounty Technologies Inc, permission to export up to 100,000 GM fish eggs a year from a hatchery in Prince Edward Island to a site high in the Panamanian rainforest. The decision marked the first time any government had given the go-ahead to commercial scale production involving a GM food animal.

The move clears the way for AquaBounty to scale up production of the salmon at its sites in PEI and Panama in anticipation of eventual approval by American authorities. The Food and Drug Administration is expected to render a decision in the near future on the sale of GM salmon, and in due course some 30 other species of GM fish currently under development, campaigners and industry figures said.

The Canadian government said in its decision that the GM fish presented a high risk to Atlantic salmon, in the event of an escape, and a spokesman was adamant there would be no immediate sale or consumption of GM salmon eggs in Canada.

Most bacteria in the human body are kept in check by the body’s immune system. But bacteria are constantly evolving to survive and reproduce. Either the immune system successfully adapts to new threats, or the body risks being overrun. Sometimes the immune system will fail to respond to a novel bacterial threat, allowing the bacteria to kill the host.

Before antibiotics were widely available, any accident, injury, or medical procedure that allowed pathogenic bacteria into the body was potentially deadly. One in nine skin infections was fatal. One in three cases of pneumonia led to death. Invasive surgeries including caesarean sections left the patient open to killer infections. Insect bites, burns, and blood transfusions frequently became a source of infection. Antibiotics kill bacteria, which meant wounds were no longer death sentences. Yet when Fleming won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1945, he warned of the dangers of antibiotic resistance:

“It is not difficult to make microbes resistant to penicillin in the laboratory by exposing them to concentrations not sufficient to kill them… There is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug make them resistant.” [NobelPrize.org]

Fleming’s prediction was right. Penicillin-resistant bacteria arrived while the drug was still being given to only a few patients. Each new class of antibiotics since then has soon been greeted by resistant bacteria. If the problem continues to grow, the US and other countries will have to invest a whole lot more in antimicrobial technologies, or create incentives for Big Pharma to do so. Like the zombie apocalypse, the post-antibiotic world would not be a pretty place to live in.

Peter Bull, 74, and his wife Hazelmary, 69, had asked the Supreme Court to decide whether their decision to refuse to let Martyn Hall and his civil partner Steven Preddy stay in a double room constituted sex discrimination under equality legislation.

Five Supreme Court justices ruled against them earlier after analysing the case at a hearing in London in October. In 2011 a judge at Bristol County Court concluded that the Bulls acted unlawfully and ordered them to pay a total of £3,600 damages. In 2012 the Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal by the Bulls following a hearing in London.

The couple had asked the Supreme Court to overrule the Court of Appeal. The Bulls said they thought that any sex outside marriage was ''a sin'' - and denied discriminating against Mr Hall and Mr Preddy. They said their decision was founded on a ''religiously-informed judgment of conscience''. Mr Hall and Mr Preddy said they were victims of discrimination.

This week, seven EU countries - including Germany - decided to accelerate development and production by companies from EU member countries of these highly controversial weapons systems. The production is scheduled to begin by 2020. The SPD can therefore announce that the next government, in which it will participate, will not formally purchase combat drones.

The decision to waive the purchase of US-American and Israeli drones shows that Berlin aims at the EU securing its own independent arms industrial base - the prerequisite also for an independent global military policy. Germany is increasing its arms exports to countries outside of the EU and NATO, to counterbalance cuts in the European and North American military budgets and to secure its national defense industrial base. This increase has been documented by the recent government's Arms Exports Report.

Now, it looks as if they have been pitched back almost a century, to the period after the first world war when the Arab territories of the Ottoman Empire were dismembered. Then, it was the imperial machinations of Britain and France that carved up their lands and future. Now, a raging civil war in Syria that is spilling over into neighbouring countries threatens to bulldoze post-Ottoman borders.

Are the states of the Near East coming apart – especially along faultlines between Sunni and Shia Muslims that run from Beirut to Baghdad? Are the frontiers in the Levant about to shatter, spawning the Arab equivalent of a post-Soviet jigsaw?

The driving force is the overarching struggle between Sunni and Shia, which knows no boundaries and is bursting through the arbitrary borders drawn by the British and French. Some see this as primarily an interstate struggle for regional power between Saudi Arabia and Iran. That is part of the story but hardly explains the ferocity of ethno-sectarian bloodletting, which rivals anything seen in the wars that succeeded the break-up of Yugoslavia.

The document emphasized the need to maintain Germany’s competitiveness – as well as that of Europe. But it was definitely Germany first: in several sections – from health care to education to media and culture – it stressed, albeit in a confident tone, the urgent need for Germany to adapt to the primacy of the digital world. “The part played by Europe in the 21st century depends decisively on whether we succeed in keeping up with the digital realm, set European standards and thus preserve our European social model,” the accord said.

Particularly when referring to the recent rift with the United States over eavesdropping and data privacy, the accord said German or European standards of protection should apply where possible. A new trade deal with the United States is vital, the accord said, but should embrace European standards in protecting data, consumers, the environment and food standards. It also says that German should become a working language of the European Union, alongside French and English. That reflects the electoral program of Ms Merkel’s conservative bloc and also seemed to show that Germany is comfortable asserting its interests in Europe.

In that vein, the accord confidently reiterates Germany’s financial policies and particularly its frequently voiced belief that weaker European economies are entitled to “solidarity” but must also take responsibility for their own affairs. Many in struggling southern Europe read this as continued austerity prescribed and administered by Berlin. German officials insist they are no stricter with others than with themselves, and have so far shrugged off demands from Brussels and Washington to spend more of their surplus.

The accord reiterates that taxpayers should not pay for any bank failures or closures and that funds from the European Stability Mechanism should not be directly available for closing banks. Similarly, it rejects all mutualization of debt in the euro zone, and foresees a renewed German push for a financial transactions tax.

The Defence Ministry released a map and geographical co-ordinates for the zone, which covered areas very close to Japan and South Korea, and included the skies over islands that China claims as Diaoyu, and the Japanese claim as Senkaku. The ministry said aircraft entering the airspace must report a flight plan and respond to identification inquiries.

"China's armed forces will take defensive emergency measures to respond to aircraft that do not co-operate in identification or refuse to follow orders," Defence spokesman Colonel Yang Yujun said, adding it was not "directed at any specific country or target". "The objective is to defend national sovereignty and territorial and air security, as well as to maintain orderly aviation," he said.

Japan swiftly lodged a strong protest over what it called a "dangerous escalation" of the dispute. The eight uninhabited islands had been a source of tension for decades, but flared after Japan bought three of the islands from a private owner last year.