Ethiopia set off alarm bells in Cairo last week when it began diverting a stretch of the river to make way for the $4.7 billion hydroelectric plant. Countries that share the river have argued over the use of its waters for decades - and analysts have repeatedly warned that the disputes could eventually boil over into war.

The high stakes involved were underlined on Monday when senior Egyptian politicians were caught on camera advising President Mohamed Mursi to take hostile action to stop the project, and one went as far as suggesting Cairo destroy the dam.

Most people in the western world assume that China just wants a “seat at the table” and is content to let the United States run the show. But that isn’t the case at all. The truth is that China doesn’t just want to compete with the United States. Rather, China actually plans to replace the United States as the dominant economic power on the planet.

In fact, China already accounts for more global trade than the United States does. So what would happen one day if China announced that it was backing the yuan with gold and that it would no longer be using the US dollar in international trade? It would cause a financial shift so cataclysmic that it is hard to even imagine.

So keep an eye on China, and look out for any news about the yuan. It won’t happen next week or next month, but eventually we could see China back the yuan with gold. When that happens, it is going to be a complete and utter financial disaster for the United States.

In a speech to the American Jewish Committee, Kerry stressed to a strongly pro-Israel crowd the need for urgent progress on a peace deal ending more than six decades of conflict, providing Israel with regional security and the Palestinians with their long-sought independent state.

"If we do not succeed now, we may not get another chance," Kerry said about the peace process, describing it as "hardly a process at all" right now. "I have heard all of the arguments for why it is too difficult to end this conflict," he added. "Cynicism has never solved anything. It has never given birth to a state, and it won't."

Kerry warned that without a two-state solution, Israel will have to choose between its Jewish and democratic nature. He also stressed the need to recognize the fundamental aspirations of the Palestinian people.

Those who believe the Israeli-Palestinian status quo is sustainable and that the separation fence will bring security to Israel are "lulling themselves into a delusion," the US secretary of state said.

"The absence of peace is perpetual conflict. ... We will find ourselves in a negative spiral of responses and counter-responses that could literally slam the door on a two-state solution," he said.

The proposals have already split the Conservative Party, as half of its MPs opposed the legislation in the Commons last month. In a bid to appease religious leaders critical of the Bill, Baroness Stowell, the deputy Tory chief whip in the House of Lords, said that ministers will now consider changes to the legislation to offer churches further protection if they refuse to conduct same-sex marriage ceremonies. The "wrecking" amendment aimed at blocking the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) tabled by Lord Dear, a Crossbench peer, was defeated by 390 votes to 148.

Ben Summerskill from Stonewall, the campaign for gay rights, said he was “delighted” by the result. “We always expected a tough challenge in the House of Lords, and Lord Dear’s ‘fatal motion’ - very rarely used - demonstrates the lengths to which a minority of peers are, sadly, still prepared to go to deny full equality to lesbian, gay and bisexual people,” he said.

And General Lord Dannatt, the former head of the Army, warned that the way legislation was rushed through Parliament goes against what he spent his career fighting for as a soldier. Lord Dannatt, a crossbench peer who was chief of the general staff from 2006 to 2009, accused the Government of committing an “abuse of the democratic process”.

The original small, peaceful protest – brutally cracked down on by the government – was simply against the destruction of one of the few remaining public spaces in Istanbul … for the development of a shopping mall by the prime minister’s son-in-law.

As Pepe Escobar writes at Asia Times: “The recent spark in Istanbul was provided by a small group of very young environmentalists organizing a peaceful sit-in, Occupy-style, in Taksim Square to protest the planned destruction of one of the city center’s few remaining public green spaces, Gezi park.

Gezi park’s destruction follows a globally tested neoliberalism racket; it will be replaced by a simulacrum – in this case a replica of the Ottoman Artillery Barracks – housing, what else, yet another shopping mall. It’s crucial to note that the mayor of Istanbul, also from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), owns a retail chain that will make a killing out of the mall. And the man holding the contract for this “redevelopment” is no less than [Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's] son-in-law”.

But the tinder lit quickly because Turks are sick of Erdogan’s nose-in-business government, which is attempting to ban alcohol, rail against tobacco and otherwise trash liberties in what has long been a very cosmopolitan, largely secular society.

The IMF said falling business investment and the eurozone's ongoing recession, which have hampered German growth, meant the economy would grow by just 0.3 percent this year, compared with an April estimate of 0.6 percent. "The uncertainty, mainly surrounding prospects for the euro area and the ongoing recession in the region, have led to declining German exports to the region as well as a sharp pull back in business investment," the IMF said in a report on Monday.

The Fund also warned of further risks to Germany's growth prospects. "Should the alleviation of uncertainty and an expected gradual recovery in the rest of the euro area fail to materialise, growth can be expected to remain below its potential for longer, leading to a widening of the output gap which would eventually result in slack in the labour market," it said.

The liquidity pumped into the economy and financial asset markets is highly unusual and cannot be maintained much longer. My take is that the stock market reflects Federal Reserve pumping more than an economic recovery.

A good case can be made for the fact that there is no recovery and that we are just beginning our decline. The efforts of government merely served to drive us more deeply into debt and stave off normal economic healing. If this observation is correct, all that has been accomplished is a postponement and accentuation of the pain to come. My economic sense tells me that is the case.

Whether you accept this conclusion or not, don’t be fooled by the performance of the stock market. There is little other than inflationary Fed policy to justify financial asset prices. Furthermore, recent performance really isn’t special as those living through the 1930s learned. In fact, what has happened recently doesn’t even measure up to the initial rebound that occurred during the Great Depression.

But now an entirely new generation of electronic tattoos are being developed that can monitor your vital signs, interact with your mobile phone and even communicate directly with your mind. These new electronic tattoos are thinner than a human hair, and they are going to fundamentally transform the way that we think about human identification.

Right now, the Internet is being absolutely plagued by hackers and identity theft has become a multi-billion dollar enterprise. It is becoming increasingly difficult to determine if someone is actually who they say that they are. And as even more of our commerce gets conducted through the Internet, identity security is going to be absolutely critical. Without a doubt, there will continue to be a push for more secure forms of identification than we have today. But there is also a very dark side to this kind of technology.

- What if someday a tyrannical government decides to make a permanent electronic tattoo for identification purposes mandatory for all citizens?

- What if you are not able to buy, sell, get a job, have a bank account or log on to the Internet without “proper identification”?

- What if the price for receiving your tattoo is to swear absolute allegiance to that tyrannical government?

The truth is that technology is always a double-edged sword. It always brings with it the promise of progress, but it also always has a dark side that could potentially be abused.

Beginning in January 2014, approx. 2,100 soldiers from the Netherlands will be integrated into the "Rapid Reaction Force Division" as a result of a declaration of intent signed in Berlin last week by the defense ministers of both countries. Three dozen projects for closer cooperation between the two armed forces are planned.

A second, similar declaration of intent, stipulating closer naval cooperation was also signed between the defense ministers of Germany and Poland. This cooperation includes combat missions. Specialists in military policy have been calling for intensifying military cooperation to increase the Bundeswehr's military clout.

Berlin would be well advised to seek cooperation particularly with the smaller countries, because they, it is said, unlike France or Great Britain, are more pliable allies due to their lesser power potentials.

The idea came in a joint text published on Thursday (30 May) during Merkel's visit to Paris. The paper says that "a full-time President for the Eurogroup of finance ministers relying on wider resources" should be created after the EU elections in 2014.

It calls for: more frequent eurozone summits; a "specific fund for the euro area" alongside the general EU budget; and new "structures" in the European Parliament to oversee euro-level economic governance. It says eurozone countries should sign binding contracts with EU institutions on economic reform.