Almost two thirds of the British public opposed same-sex relationships because they believed they were morally “wrong” 25 years ago. But, according to the latest British Social Attitudes survey, only one in five people now disapproves of gay or lesbian relationships in principle. The speed of change is all the more striking given that during the 1980s the number of people who objected to homosexuality was on the rise.

In the early 1980s more than half the population did not think it was “acceptable” for a gay or lesbian person to be a teacher and more than four out of 10 people did not believe they should hold a “responsible position in public life”. The latest survey found that 56 per cent of those polled supported gay marriage, which is now on the Statute Book.

The report describes the change in public opinion as “perhaps the most dramatic attitude shift of all” in the last 30 years.

Members of the conference were presented accounts of international experts, Syrian public figures and Russian news reporters covering the Syrian conflict, which back Russia’s opposition to the US plans, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The speakers argued that the suspected sarin gas attack near Damascus on August 21 was likely a provocation of the rebel forces and that a military action against the President Bashar Assad government will likely result in civilian casualties and a humanitarian catastrophe affecting the entire region.

Russia is convinced that the chemical incident was a provocation by rebel forces, which staged a false flag attack to drag the US into the conflict and capitalize on the damage that the Syrian army is likely to sustain in the American intervention.

An increasing number of reports are backing Russia’s position, with local witnesses, US and British former intelligence professionals and Europeans recently released from rebel captivity all speaking for a provocation scenario.

At first glance, the Alternative for Germany's (AfD) campaign ad seems about as threatening as a commercial for the local optician. It features outraged, but pleasant-seeming citizens - a father and his daughter, a newspaper-reading businesswoman and a cyclist - looking thoughful while asking questions. "Why is all our money going to Greece, instead of being invested in damaged streets and bridges?", one person asks. "Why are pensioners left with an ever-smaller amount of money in their wallets?", "Who is paying for the debt that our politicians are accruing?", asks another.

The party is also trying to send a positive message at campaign events. During a demonstration in Hamburg several weeks ago, a young mother was captured on camera by an AfD campaigner. "There aren't any populists taking part here," she says, blinking into the sunlight. Party leader Bernd Lucke, who made an appearance in a casual polo shirt, encouraged people to "demonstrate peacefully".

Just two weeks before the general election, the anti-euro party is hopeful about its prospects. In a survey published earlier this week, the AfD, for the first time ever, came close to achieving the five percent vote-share required to win seats in the German parliament, the Bundestag.

As the Chancellery-financed think tank explained, the foreign states' "financial and logistic support" of parties to a civil war, violate "the intervention prohibition." Berlin supports the insurgents in Syria in various ways, ranging from medical treatment of wounded insurgents at hospitals of the Bundeswehr or the supply of "protective vests" or even reconstruction work in insurgent-controlled areas of the country.

Military training of militiamen and deliveries of weapons, by various allies of Germany, also violate the UN Charter's prohibition of the use of force. Punitive military operations are in contravention of international law. However, Berlin's think tank does not expect this will have a major impact on war plans currently being forged by the West. "The question of international legality will not be decisive in determining whether the operation will be carried out." The think tank in Berlin assumes that there will be no attempts to make reference to international law in an all-out attempt to legitimize a manifestly illegal use of force.

It is "to be expected that, like back in 1999 with NATO's intervention in Kosovo, the states involved will use no explicit legal arguments." This will be a repeat of what happened - at the behest primarily of Germany - in the war on Yugoslavia: the replacement of international norms with the law of the jungle.

The US proposal was little more than an off-the-cuff remark made by John Kerry, the US secretary of state, during a press conference in London. But it gave Russia and Syria an opening to try to delay any American-led attack. The Kremlin quickly took the opportunity, with foreign minister Sergei Lavrov urging Assad to place Syria's chemical weapons "under international control". Syria then responded by "welcoming" - although not accepting - Russia's idea.

The move, the first time the Assad regime has been offered a chance to avert an attack, threatens a new diplomatic headache for the White House just as it is struggling to persuade a sceptical US Congress to back military action.

Mr Kerry was also criticized on Monday for saying that any US-led military strikes would be "unbelievably small", language that some Republicans claimed sent the wrong message to the Syrian president. Assad himself gave an interview to American television on Monday, warning the US to expect "everything" if it carried out air-strikes on his country. The latest diplomatic developments were triggered by a press conference at the Foreign Office with Mr Kerry and William Hague, the Foreign Secretary.

Speaking during his Angelus address, the Pope also condemned the proliferation of wars and conflicts and questioned whether they were wars about problems or commercial wars to sell arms on the black market.

His remarks came just hours after thousands of people attended a prayer vigil in St Peter’s Square on Saturday evening as part of the events for the special day of prayer and fasting for peace in Syria and the world that was called by the Pope and was marked by people across the globe in different ways.

Also etched into the 10cm medallion are a shofar (ram’s horn) and the image of a Torah scroll. The medallion may be the oldest Torah ornament ever found in archaeological digs.

A third-generation archaeologist working at the Hebrew University’s Institute of Archaeology, Dr Mazar directs excavations on the City of David’s summit and at the Temple Mount’s southern wall. Calling the find “a breathtaking, once-in-a-lifetime discovery,” Dr Mazar said: “We have been making significant finds from the First Temple Period in this area, a much earlier time in Jerusalem’s history, so discovering a golden seven-branched Menorah from the seventh century CE at the foot of the Temple Mount was a complete surprise.”

The menorah, a candelabrum with seven branches that was used in the Temple, is now the national symbol of the state of Israel and reflects the historical presence of Jews in the area. The position of the items as they were discovered indicates that one bundle was carefully hidden underground while the second bundle was apparently abandoned in haste and scattered across the floor.

Given the date of the items and the manner in which they were found, Mazar estimates they were abandoned in the context of the Persian conquest of Jerusalem in 614 CE.

In a rebound from 2012's record low an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia's northern shores, days before the annual re-freeze is even set to begin. The Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific has remained blocked by pack-ice all year, forcing some ships to change their routes.

A leaked report to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) seen by the Mail on Sunday, has led some scientists to claim that the world is heading for a period of cooling that will not end until the middle of this century.

If correct, it would contradict computer forecasts of imminent catastrophic warming. The news comes several years after the BBC predicted that the arctic would be ice-free by 2013.

MPs voted against intervention after the attack on civilians that the UK and US blames on the Syrian government, but the Assad regime blames on rebels. The US is trying to gather support for strikes, but no agreement was reached at last week's G20 summit. Mr Hague said a response was needed to "deter" chemical weapons use.

"I do believe very strongly the world must stand up to the use of chemical weapons and there is a debate now taking place in the US Congress," Mr Hague told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show.

"The risks of not doing so in my view are greater than the risks of doing so in a limited, proportionate and careful way." He added: "If it is decided in the various parliaments of the world that no one will stand up to the use of chemical weapons and take any action about that, that will be a very alarming moment in the affairs of the world."

As he continues to pour several hundred billion dollars into the Middle East war theater that will likely soon include Syria, Congress wants to cut $40 billion in food aid to its constituents. A recent USDA report reveals that nearly 18 million families, or 49 million people, lacked “food security” which is defined as “consistent, dependable access to enough food for active, healthy living.” Food insecurity is a polite term for starvation.

Since 1995, the percent starving in the US hovered at or below 12%. That changed in 2008 when it jumped to 14.6%, and has stayed above 14% since then. In 2012, the percentage was 14.5%, or one in seven people.

It announced quietly that it would transfer to the state - ie confiscate - the bulk of assets owned by the country's private pension funds (many of them owned by such foreign firms as PIMCO parent Allianz, AXA, Generali, ING and Aviva), without offering any compensation. In effect, the state just nationalized roughly half of the private sector pension fund assets, although it had a more politically correct name for it: pension overhaul.

By way of background, Poland has a hybrid pension system: as Reuters explains, mandatory contributions are made into both the state pension vehicle, known as ZUS, and the private funds, which are collectively known by the Polish acronym OFE. Bonds make up roughly half the private funds' portfolios, with the rest company stocks.

And while a change to state-pension funds was long awaited - an overhaul if you will - nobody expected that this would entail a literal pillage of private sector assets.

This suggestion was put forward at the 21st Conference for General Thoractic Surgery in Birmingham, England, in May. A paper presented by doctors from The University Hospitals, Leuven suggested that euthanized patients could significantly boost the number of deceased donors. The authors state that in Belgium "euthanasia donors accounted for 12.8% of all lung DCD's".

They observe that "immediate post-transplant graft function and long-term outcome in recipients was excellent." Furthermore, it is believed that patients will see this as a great opportunity for a final act of altruism. "More euthanasia donors are to be expected with more public awareness," they say.

The 12.8% were actually 6 patients. Three of them had severe neuromuscular disease and 3 were mentally ill. They had all made an explicit request to donate their organs. The transplant specialists stressed that the euthanasia and the transplant were performed by two separate and unrelated teams.

Conservative bioethicist Wesley Smith has attacked the proposal, stating that there is "nothing more dangerous than making mentally ill and despairing disabled people believe their deaths have greater value than their lives".

Citing what it calls a "top secret memo" in April from the Ministry of Interior, AINA says the Saudi government offered 1,239 inmates a pardon and a monthly stipend for their families, which were were allowed to stay in the Sunni Arab kingdom. Syrian President Bashar Assad is an Alawite, a minority Shiite sect.

According to an English translation of the memo, besides Saudis, the prisoners included Afghans, Egyptians, Iraqis, Jordanians, Kuwaitis, Pakistanis, Palestinians, Somalis, Sudanese, Syrians and Yemenis. All faced "execution by sword" for murder, rape or drug smuggling. Russia, which has backed Assad, objected to the bargain and allegedly threatened to bring the issue to the United Nations, said an unidentified former Iraqi member of Parliament who confirmed the memo's authenticity, says AINA, an independent outlet.

"Initially Saudi Arabia denied the existence of this program. But the testimony of the released prisoners forced the Saudi government to admit, in private circles, its existence," AINA writes. "The Saudis agreed to stop their clandestine activities and work towards finding a political solution on condition that knowledge of this program would not be made public."

One of the important outcomes in the poll, however, renders a serious challenge to the eurozone and therefore to the entire European Union. And it can probably give a hint of the path Ms Merkel will choose if she stays another four years in the chancellery in Berlin. 55% of respondents believe that Germany should stay in the zone of the single currency, but that the euro area should be restricted to a club of similarly thinking countries.

These attitudes toward promoting the euro area to an elite club of capables are supported by the other results in the poll realised by YouGov Deutschland. A little over half of respondents do not want the next government to commit to further loans for troubled eurozone members. The poll was conducted in the same period when Wolfgang Schaeuble, the German finance minster, announced in the peak of the election campaign that Greece needed a third bailout programme (meaning a loan). But 35 per cent agree more money to be given to countries with troubles.

Open Europe's poll is very timely because it marks the beginning of the new political season in the EU which will pass entirely under the shadow of the German elections. Not only under the shadow, but it is even formally recognised that everything is in waiting for the outcome. The results from the poll also provide ground for better understanding of the motives that drive the German citizens. In that sense, it would be worth for the Europeans that live in countries with chronically malfunctioning rule of law to note that for 48% of the Germans adhering to law is much more important than saving the euro.

This result is in response to the question whether they approve the OMT operations of the European Central Bank, pronounced by the German Constitutional court as illegal. Open Europe emphasises that this shows how seriously Germans take the rule of law.