At stake as Obama and his aides wrestle with that question in the coming days is the $1.5 billion in aid the United States sends to Cairo each year - almost all of it for the military - as well as the president's views on how best to promote Arab democracy. If the United States formally declares Mursi's ouster a coup, US law mandates that most aid for its longtime ally must stop. And that could weaken the Egyptian military, one of the country's most stable institutions with long-standing ties to US authorities.

Further complicating Obama's calculus is the fact that millions of Egyptians rallied in favor of Mursi's departure, and that the military announced a roadmap for return to civilian rule that was blessed by Egypt's Muslim and Christian religious leaders.

But Mursi and his Muslim Brotherhood retain backing from a broad swathe of Egyptian society, even as he alienated many of his countrymen.

Obama, after meeting top advisors at the White House, said in a statement that he was "deeply concerned" by the army's actions and had directed the relevant US agencies to review the implications for US assistance to Egypt. But he did not use the word "coup" and stopped well short of advocating for Mursi's reinstatement, suggesting Washington might be willing to accept the military's move as a way to end a political crisis in a nation of 83 million people struggling with severe economic difficulties.

A cardinal in Rome earns about €3,000 ($3,888) a month, even less than a pastor in Germany. But a cardinal's life in Rome is a lot more expensive - with visits to restaurants and shopping at boutiques for the upscale clothing men of the church are expected to wear, not to mention their jewellery and the antiques they display in their apartments. So it's good to have friends who can treat you or otherwise provide support now and then.

Friends are also happy to give a cardinal a hand - and not just out of religious considerations. A cardinal can be helpful in both political and business terms. So it's not surprising that a symbiotic relationship between parts of the Curia and the upper class around the world has formed - one that brings together the establishment, luxury and power. It's a nice little tradition that new Pope Francis would like to put an end to. For the Catholic establishment, though, it is nothing less than a catastrophe.

Even before his enthronement as pope, when he was still a cardinal, Jorge Mario Bergoglio had spoken clearly about this. During his speech to the cardinal conclave, he warned that, "When the church does not emerge from itself to evangalize, it becomes self-referential and therefore becomes sick." He warned of "self-referentiality" and "theological narcissism." He also criticized a "mundane church that lives within itself, of itself and for itself." And it appears the Argentinian pope meant this criticism seriously. In fact, he demonstrates that every day.

Instead of wearing a gold cross, he has one of steel. And he lives in a sparsely furnished apartment in the Santa Marta guest house rather than in the Apostolic Palace. Instead of taking his seat in the Vatican concert hall to listen to classical music, he recently remained at his desk working on the final version of his decree for the church-state's own Institute for Religious Works (IOR) bank. With his signature, he created a powerful special papal commission to review the bank's activities. He also said the new commission must change everything at the Vatican Bank, as it is also known. He said the Vatican certainly needed a bank, but its areas of business should only reach a "certain point."

"Did we actually vote for someone who really believes in what he preaches?" some within the Curia are now whispering.

Don Patrizio Poggi, 46, told Italian authorities that a former Carabinieri pimped boys for nine clergymen. Poggi also accused the former Carabinieri of selling consecrated hosts for satanic rites.

Poggi reportedly presented documentary and photographic evidence to police in the company of two senior Vatican clergymen who vouched for his credibility. Poggi identified the nine clergymen, including two senior church officials and a religion lecturer. Three people have been placed under formal investigation.

The students recorded audio of the exchange on an iPhone proving that the language-analyst NSA recruiters were left tongue-tied. "I'm surprised that for language analysts you're incredibly imprecise with your language," grad student Madiha Tahir charged when they failed to define what constitutes an adversary.

"What you're selling us is untrue" she added. "We also know that the NSA took down brochures and fact sheets after the Snowden revelations because those fact sheets had severe inaccuracies and untruths in them - so how are we supposed to believe what you're saying?"

Another student directly challenged the NSA's morality for using the "globe as their playground" and then partying at the office with co-workers. She then challenged them to become whistleblowers because the truth will ultimately prevail.

Glenn Greenwald speaking with Eric Bolling on Fox & Friends about the ongoing revelations of NSA spying and whistleblower Edward Snowden hinted that a new NSA story was forthcoming and potentially explosive.

When asked if he was ready to unveil a new NSA scoop, Greenwald responded: I will say that there are vast programs of both domestic and international spying that the world will be shocked to learn about that the NSA is engaged in with no democratic accountability, and that's what's driving our reporting.

Greenwald also gave a preview of this next exposé over the weekend during a speech given to the Socialism 2013 conference, saying it would report on "a brand new technology [that] enables the National Security Agency to redirect into its own repositories one billion cell phones calls every single day."

He also claimed that had the deployment of “golden rice” - a strain of the food that boosts vitamin A levels and reduces blindness in developing countries – not been thwarted, seven million lives could have been saved.

But Mr Goldsmith rubbished his claims and accused him of having "swallowed the industry line, hook, line and sinker". He told The Independent: “Any half-way decent GM enthusiast with a scientific background would have blushed during much of the speech Owen Paterson made. You have to wonder about the Government's gung-ho attitude to GM - you can't stuff pollen back into a tin."

He dismissed Mr Paterson's comments about golden rice as “nonsense”, adding: “No serious GM campaigner would ever make those claims for which there is no factual basis at all. It undermines his credibility on this issue and makes the Government look very silly.” The Richmond Park MP, who sits on the Government's Environment Audit Committee, also raised questions over Mr Paterson's suitability for the job of Environment Secretary, suggesting he failed to understand the issue of GM.

“When designing policy that's a dangerous thing, and I'm concerned big business is framing the debate for the Government,” he said. In response, Mr Paterson insisted that the problems the world faced in feeding the global population in four decades’ time were “very real” and should be prepared for immediately. We should not ignore what is a “scientifically proven, safe technology” that could help with this, he argued. He added: “There are different opinions on GM. I know and respect that. It's why I wanted to launch a national discussion about the issue, so that people can talk about GM in an informed way."

This, despite the fact that prominent elected officials in the UK are right now pushing GMOs on a public that is largely opposed to them, effectively shining the spotlight on their own insane hypocrisy with regards to the GMO issue. As recently reported by the UK’s Daily Mail, news of the Parliament’s ban on GMOs at its own restaurants comes amid the procurement of a massive pro-GMO propaganda campaign being led by this very same Parliament against the interests of its own people. Biotech industry hacks like Conservative Secretary of State for the Environment Owen Paterson, for instance, who actually claims GMOs are safer than non-GMOs, is currently pushing for more GMO acceptance in his country even though he does not eat GMOs himself.

Paterson, who regularly dines on only the highest quality non-GMO fare at fancy Parliament restaurants like the Portcullis House and the Pavilion buffet, is quoted as blaming starvation in third world countries on widespread rejection of GMOs in the UK and elsewhere. Resistance to GM “Golden Rice,” for instance, is apparently the reason why millions of children have gone blind or died, according to Paterson, whose vehement advocacy of GMOs borders on maniacal.

“Over the last 15 years, despite offering the seeds for free to those who would need them, every attempt to deploy this Golden Rice has been thwarted,” exclaimed Paterson in a recent nonsensical statement. Completely untrue in every sense, as “Golden Rice” has never been approved anywhere, nor has it ever been offered for free to any country, Paterson’s fantasy views reflect the same lunatic sentiments as those held by many others in the Parliament, who themselves have opposed GMOs from the very beginning.

Mr Farage's intervention comes after Helen Boaden, the director of radio at the BBC, admitted that the corporation suffered from a "deep liberal bias". She made the comments in a report by Stuart Prebble, a former ITV executive, who found that the corporation had been "slow" to reflect increasing opposition to immigration and the European Union.

A separate Home Office report published yesterday found that asylum seekers, refugees and low-skilled immigrants have caused overcrowding, fueled community tensions and put pressure on the health service. On the subject of immigration, Mr Farage said: "They cover themselves by this idea that they are nice, and other people who differ, who believe that migration has gone too far, are in some way nasty.”

"Is it nasty to think that the sheer volume of people arriving on our shores and impacting upon our services, jobs, wages is wrong?”

“Is it nasty to think that people should have been consulted before their communities were altered out of all recognition?”

Mr Farage's comments come after the Home Office report found that half of people in Britain live in areas where there are high levels of immigration. The report found that immigrants were likely to lead to longer waiting times at GP surgeries, be involved in anti-social behaviour and create pest control issues because of overcrowding.

The EU's executive arm said that its investigation, which began in 2011, had uncovered anti-competitive practices during the 2008-9 financial crisis. The commission investigation focuses on the credit default swap (CDS) market which allows banks and businesses to hedge against possible losses. However, more controversially, they were used by Goldman Sachs and others to speculate on the probability of a Greek debt crisis in 2010.

There are almost 2 million active CDS contracts with a joint notional amount of €10 trillion worldwide. Most CDS contracts are negotiated privately between so-called 'over the counter' derivatives. However, critics of the practice say that the lack of transparency distorts the market and increases the risk of the parties being unable to meet their obligations.

The banks involved include a handful of Europe's largest financial institutions such as Barclays, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). The UK-based Barclays and RBS were also involved in last year's Libor rate-fixing scandal which saw a handful of big banks rig the interest rate at which banks lend to each other, driving up the price of financial products to customers.

From Greece to Cyprus, Slovenia to Spain and Italy, and now most pressingly Portugal, where the finance and foreign ministers resigned in the space of two days, a host of problems is stirring after 10 months of relative calm imposed by the European Central Bank.

Portuguese Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho told the nation in an address late on Tuesday that he did not accept the foreign minister's resignation and would try to go on governing. If his government does end up collapsing, as is now more likely, it will raise immediate questions about Lisbon's ability to meet the terms of the 78-billion-euro bailout it agreed with the EU and International Monetary Fund in 2011.

Flanked by religious and opposition leaders, General Sisi said Mr Morsi had "failed to meet the demands of the Egyptian people". Anti-Morsi protesters in Cairo gave a huge cheer in response to the speech.

The army is currently involved in a show of force, fanning out across Cairo and taking control of the capital, BBC correspondent Quentin Sommerville reports.

Immediately afterwards, she expressed her support for expanding economic cooperation. To try to resolve the differences within Berlin's establishment, the SPD-affiliated Friedrich Ebert Foundation has just published a paper with four scenarios for future policy toward Russia, intended to make it easier to explore the various options and their potentials.

The scenarios range from intensive cooperation, in the aftermath of regime change in Moscow; to a simple hegemonic motivated cooperation in the aftermath of a partial collapse of the Euro zone; to German-Russian arrangements on the mutual control of Central Asia and Southeast Europe in the aftermath of the USA's "transfer of its focus to the Pacific." A readjustment of the German policy toward Russia is not out of the question in the aftermath of the upcoming German parliamentary elections.

The high-powered, five-member panel, which includes four prelates and a female Harvard law professor, will report directly to him, bypassing the Vatican bureaucracy that itself has sometimes been hit by allegations of scandal and corruption. The Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), as the bank is formally known, has long been tarnished by accusations that it has failed to meet international transparency standards intended to combat money laundering and tax evasion.

The Vatican said the commission, which Francis set up with a personal decree known as a "chirografo," would enable him "to know better the juridical position and the activities of the Institute to allow an improved harmonization with the mission of the universal Church". It said the commission would have full powers to obtain all documentation and data necessary and bypass usual rules that oblige officials to respect the secrecy of their office.