Raising the ante in the confrontation with the Assad regime and its international supporters, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius this week called for the use of force in Syria. Across the Rhine Valley in Berlin, however, his German equivalent Guido Westerwelle urged caution: "Before speaking of consequences we must first have clarification." French daily newspaper Le Monde ran the outsized headline "Toxic Gas Massacre in Damascus". Most German newspapers that day led with the Bradley Manning verdict.

While French leaders were declaring that "all hopes for a political solution or a political transition in Syria are destroyed" and considered unilaterally arming the opposition in March, German ministers were doing their best to get the parties to the negotiating table. "As long as the logic of violence and military victory is in place, there can be no lasting peace and stability for Syria," Westerwelle said in May.

The post-reunification "German Question" has time and again challenged Germany's partners to reconcile the federal republic's economic power with its reticence to contribute to collective security. The oddity of an unaligned behemoth at the heart of NATO has begun to harden into reality, even as allies refuse to allow Germany to slip into Swedish-style neutrality.

Al Arabiya, the origin of the story, is not a neutral in the Syrian conflict. It was set up in 2002 by the Saudi Royal Family in Dubai. It is majority-owned by the Saudi broadcaster, Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC). Saudi Arabia is a major financial backer of the attempt to topple Syria’s government. That is a matter of record. So on first glance Saudi-owned media reporting such an inflammatory anti-Assad allegation might be taken with a dose of salt.

The story gets even murkier. Further in the text of the article we read that the “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said dozens of people were killed, including children, in fierce bombardment.” Now the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has been the source of every news report negative against the Syrian Assad government since the war began in 2011. More curious about the humanitarian-sounding SOHR is the fact, as uncovered by investigative journalists, that it consists of a sole Syrian refugee who has lived in London for the past 13 years named Rami Abdul Rahman, a Syrian Sunni muslim who owns a clothing shop and is running a Twitter page from his home. Partly owing to a very friendly profile story on the BBC, he gained mainstream media credibility. He is anything but unbiased.

The other aspect of the suspicious reports is the “convenient” fact they coincide with the arrival two days earlier of an official UN weapons inspection team, allowed by the government, to investigate allegations of chemical weapons use in the Syrian war. It begs the most obvious question: What conceivably would Bashar al Assad stand to gain from using banned chemical weapons just at the time he has agreed to let a UN chemical weapons team into Syria?

The protesters marched west of the capital on Friday, protesting against the stringent new laws that prohibit public dissent. “Down with Hamad”, the crowd chanted as it walked with national red-and-white flags and banners that called for King Hamad bin Isaa al-Khalifa and Prime Minister Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman al-Khalifa to go. King Hamad has been in power since 1999.

Two-and-a-half years have gone by since Bahrain’s own February 2011 Spring, when a Shiite-led uprising against the [minority] Sunni al-Khalifa dynasty resulted in security forces crushing the revolt and killing at least 35 people in the process. Sporadic unrest has been going on since. In July Bahrain's parliament passed strict new laws to curb opposition activities, including banning protests in the capital and giving authorities the right to strip citizenship from those convicted of violence.

Bahrain sits in the midst of a battle for Gulf influence between neighboring Shiite Iran and a Sunni Saudi Arabia. The country is home to the US Navy’s 5th Fleet, as well as being the Pentagon’s main base to counter Iran’s expanding military presence in the Gulf and protect oil shipping lanes through the Gulf of Hormuz.

It would be “hypocritical” of the 103-year-old movement to expect to use church premises after abandoning its core beliefs, Rev Paul Williamson of St George's Church in Feltham, Middlesex, said. “If the Guide promise does not mention God, I cannot see why they should be on Church premises,” he added.

“The Girl Guide Association does not realise what it’s done. It has not thought through the consequences and has made itself look ridiculous.” The organisation has been plunged into an atheist row after announcing that it is to scrap the traditional oath, replacing references to "God" and "country" with a pledge to "be true to myself" and serve the "community". A group in Harrogate this week became the first to openly defy the movement by vowing that it would be "sticking with the previous Promise".

Rev Brian Hunt, minister of the church where Harrogate Guides have met for around 50 years, supported their stance, indicating that the unit could not possibly expect to use the facilities otherwise. “My church allows the Guides to use my premises for free,” he said. “And we do that because they’ve always tried to look after the whole person – body, mind and soul – and we encourage that. I don’t think, in fairness, that Girl Guides can expect churches to provide premises for free when they don’t believe in God.”

Germans seem to have already made up their mind. With just under a month to go before the general election, Angela Merkel's conservatives are well ahead in the polls and the chancellor herself likewise remains extremely popular. Change, even should she be re-elected for a third term, isn't likely to be forthcoming, pundits say. But Germans aren't the only ones with interests at stake. Across the Atlantic, the United States is watching too - and Washington is hoping that, once the campaign is history, Germany will take on a greater global leadership role on issues like trade, the euro crisis and international security.

Daniel Hamilton, director of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University, calls it the "expectation gap." "I think the assumption Americans have is that Germany should always step up and take responsibility commensurate with its weight in the world," he says. Americans, he suggests, always expect slightly more from Germany than Germany is willing to give.

Those issues, from Washington's perspective, tend to boil down to a consistent message: The US wants Germany to increase its involvement and leadership when it comes to global affairs. As Europe's strongest economy and its largest country, the US believes there's more Germany could do to pull its weight.

The blaze has forced scores of tourists to flee during peak season and is threatening thousands of homes. More than 2,000 firefighters have been tackling the flames in difficult terrain. It is just 2% contained. California Governor Jerry Brown has declared a state of emergency for San Francisco 150 miles away as the blaze is threatening power lines that bring electricity to the city.

Two of three hydroelectric power stations serving the city have been shut down. The city's water supplies could also be hit if a reservoir, four miles from the fire, is affected. A spokeswoman for the US Forest Service said 4,500 homes, hotels, businesses and several campsites were under threat as of Friday, up from 2,500 the day before.

Lee Bentley of the US Forest Service told CBS News earlier this week: "We've got a monster on our hands. This fire is making its own weather. It's going every which direction. This is one of the worst I've ever been on. I've been doing it for quite a few years." The area's steep hills and rugged terrain are hampering firefighters' efforts, officials say.

The 'Beaver Creek' fire in Idaho has destroyed some 45,000 hectares near the ski resort of Sun Valley. Meanwhile, five wildfires in Yellowstone National Park have scorched about 18 square miles of mostly remote areas.

The SCO summit is highly important for the Islamic republic, and President Rouhani will hold talks with the heads of states of the SCO member countries on the sidelines of the meeting. The Bishkek visit would be Rouhani's first foreign trip since taking office on August 4. The SCO is a Eurasian political, economic and military organization which was founded in 2001 in Shanghai by the leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

It allows Microsoft to control the computer remotely through a built-in backdoor. Keys to that backdoor are likely accessible to the NSA – and in an unintended ironic twist, perhaps even to the Chinese. The backdoor is called “Trusted Computing,” developed and promoted by the Trusted Computing Group, founded a decade ago by the all-American tech companies AMD, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Wave Systems. Its core element is a chip, the Trusted Platform Module (TPM), and an operating system designed for it, such as Windows 8. Trusted Computing Group has developed the specifications of how the chip and operating systems work together.

Its purpose is Digital Rights Management and computer security. The system decides what software had been legally obtained and would be allowed to run on the computer, and what software, such as illegal copies or viruses and Trojans, should be disabled. The whole process would be governed by Windows, and through remote access, by Microsoft.

Now there is a new set of specifications out, creatively dubbed TPM 2.0. While TPM allowed users to opt in and out, TPM 2.0 is activated by default when the computer boots up. The user cannot turn it off. Microsoft decides what software can run on the computer, and the user cannot influence it in any way. Windows governs TPM 2.0. And what Microsoft does remotely is not visible to the user. In short, users of Windows 8 with TPM 2.0 surrender control over their machines the moment they turn it on for the first time.

“There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Mr Margallo is going to get bilateral talk on the sovereignty of Gibraltar,” the 41-year-old leader told the Daily Telegraph in an interview at his office. “Spain will not even get the opportunity to talk, discuss, negotiate about the sovereignty of Gibraltar if the people of Gibraltar don’t say to the UK that we are content with them having that discussion. I have made very clear that there is no question of Gibraltar consenting to any such talks occuring,” he said.

Mr Picardo gave the interview a day after Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo, the Spanish foreign minister, penned an article in the Wall Street Journal insisting on the removal of an artificial reef created by Gibraltar to boost fishing stocks, from waters that he said were “undoubtedly Spanish”. The chief minister hit back arguing that they are recognised as British Gibraltar territorial waters in a UN charter accepted by all countries excepting Spain.

Moscow continues to monitor closely the event surrounding the “alleged” chemical attack near Damascus, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Aleksandr Lukashevich, said in a statement. “We’re getting more new evidence that this criminal act was of a provocative nature,” he stressed. “In particular, there are reports circulating on the Internet, in particular that the materials of the incident and accusations against government troops had been posted for several hours before the so-called attack. Thus, it was a pre-planned action.”

The Damascus chemical attack accusations indicate the launch of “another anti-Syrian propaganda wave” and, in this context, the calls on the UN Security Council to immediately use force in Syria “heard from some EU capitals” are “unacceptable”, Lukashevich said.

The Foreign Ministry spokesman said that Assad’s government has demonstrated a “constructive approach” to the chemical weapons issue by allowing UN experts into the country. But it’s alarming that the “same signals” aren’t coming from the Syrian opposition, which so far hasn’t displayed willingness to ensure the safety and efficient operations of UN investigators on the territory it controls, he said.

Police have three suspects, two black and one white. The former said they were bored and decided to shoot Lane for “the fun of it.” As Lane was white and the shooter black, racism has surfaced as a motive. Thursday came reports that killing a white man may have been an initiation rite for the black teens in joining some offshoot of the Crips or Bloods.

What happened in Oklahoma and the reaction, or lack of reaction to it, tells us much about America in 2013, not much of it good. Teenagers who can shoot and kill a man out of summertime boredom are moral barbarians, dead souls.

But who created these monsters? Where did they come from? Surely one explanation lies in the fact that the old conscience-forming and character-forming institutions – home, church, school and a moral and healthy culture fortifying basic truths – have collapsed. And the community hardest hit is Black America. Black mobs routinely terrorize cities across the country, but the media and government are silent.

In the real America, interracial violence is overwhelmingly black-on-white. Even if the media will not report it, everybody knows it. And journalists will not dig into the numbers that prove it, for the truth would undermine their ideology and contradict the narrative that governs and gives meaning to their lives.

A prominent bishop has called on Christian Guide and Brownie volunteers across the country to follow the example of a group of leaders who are defying official policy over the issue. The Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester, said that he hoped “many others” would adopt the stance taken by the women in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, who have vowed to continue using the traditional membership promise, with its references to “God” and “country”, after it is abolished next month.

He warned the organisation could even face a split if it refuses to compromise and allow two pledges. Meanwhile supporters of the women insist they are simply giving members a choice over the matter – in stark contrast, they claim, to the leadership. But Gill Slocombe, the Chief Guide, underlined the crisis facing the organisation insisting that the rebel leaders “need to accept this change” adding pointedly that she “sincerely hopes” they will not have to leave.

But the incident had all the earmarks of the three waves of denial-of-service attacks that have bedevilled US financial institutions, including stock brokerages, since last September. An Iranian hacking collective — Cyber Fighters of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam — has claimed credit for orchestrating sophisticated attacks that have overwhelmed the expensive security systems US banks have put into place to keep their online banking services up and secure.

"My first thought is that it is a denial-of-service attack, but I'm not sure," says Gartner banking security analyst Avivah Litan. "It's a very attractive target. It's very visible, and that's what these Iranian state attacks are all about, making a political statement by disrupting a visible website."

Saudi Arabia remains a relatively closed society; gender mixing is restricted to a tight circle of relatives and family friends, and direct criticism of the ruling family or powerful conservative clergy is frowned upon. Morality police patrol the kingdom's few public spaces such as shopping malls to enforce rigid social rules.

Cyberspace presents considerably more complicated challenges than a shopping centre, however, and Saudi authorities are alarmed by the unfettered contact that the Internet allows, including for activists who spread news and information not covered by state media. With just under half the kingdom's nearly 27 million population younger than 25, according to the CIA Factbook, Saudis are avid users of social media of all kinds.

"People use social media ... more than asking to meet in person. It's safer," said a Jeddah-based activist, who like others interviewed for this story asked not to be named because he feared reprisals from state authorities. "We know they are watching us, but they cannot control us on social media."

Ofer Shelah of the Yesh Atid (There Is a Future) party, Netanyahu’s biggest coalition partner, made the comments earlier this week in a Tel Aviv “pub talk” hosted by the left-wing group Peace Now. Many in the Israeli media jumped on the fact that Shelah — a former journalist like his friend and party founder Yair Lapid — seemed to be endorsing a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that contradicts the party line, as well as that of Netanyahu’s Likud.

“Jerusalem will remain united under Israeli sovereignty,” the Yesh Atid party wrote in its founding declaration of principles, “because Jerusalem is not just a place or a city, but the center of the Jewish-Israeli ethos and the holy place for which Jews longed throughout all generations.”