China this week responded to EU anti-dumping tariffs on solar panels with a levy on European wine, and warned it has “plenty of cards” still to play. By attacking wine producers, though, Beijing has potentially turned a straightforward tit-for-tat dispute over state subsidies between Germany and China into a full-blown European trade war.

France has effectively been targeted in retaliation for a levy designed to protect German manufacturers in what appears to be a deliberate attempt to inflame tensions within the EU. In doing so, experts said, the relative newcomer to the power politics of global trade has demonstrated smart tactical acumen. Berenberg Bank’s chief UK economist Rob Wood said: “China looks like it knows how to play the game.”

The danger is that China may decide to target other seemingly innocent parties if the row escalates, and that might mean Britain. Such a move could be damaging as the UK is pinning much of its hope for export success on the growing Chinese market.

Whilst paper gold saw a scary crash in mid-April, the demand for physical gold has never been as high, which confirms the complete decoupling between the paper gold and physical gold markets. What happens when everyone realises that paper gold certificates have no physical counterpart? When the title document to an ingot cannot be honoured?

The paper in question has no value. We must therefore expect more volatility in the paper gold price. This is why some brokers won’t allow any leverage on paper gold positions. This decoupling also shows that major problems are ahead because confidence has now been shaken. However, physical gold itself has its best days ahead. China has clearly understood this and buys gold en masse...

Responding to a hypothetical question, Samantha Power, who was named to replace ambassador Susan Rice, said if given the opportunity she would advise the president to sacrifice billions of dollars of aid to the Jewish state, allocating the funds instead to “the new state of Palestine.” “In the Palestine-Israeli situation, there’s an abundance of information and what we don’t need is some kind of early warning mechanism there,” she said, in response to a question regarding how the United States should monitor a situation in the Middle east which may be “moving toward genocide.”

“What we need is a willingness to actually put something on the line in service of helping the situation, and putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import. It may more crucially mean sacrificing or investing literally billions of dollars not in servicing Israel’s military but actually investing in the new state of Palestine, investing billions of dollars it would probably take also to support what I think will have to be a mammoth protection force,” she said.

“You have to go in as if you are serious. You have to put something on the line and unfortunately the imposition of a solution on unwilling parties is dreadful,” she continued. Power, a longtime adviser for President Obama, left the administration in February, but was considered the favorite to replace Rice at the U.N.

Judge Dean Spielmann, from Luxemburg, also insisted that ministers had a duty to grant the vote to prisoners. His intervention once again puts the unelected court on a collision course with Westminster. Technically, the EU and the European Court of Human Rights are separate institutions, with the ECHR overseen by the 47-member Council of Europe. But Mr Spielmann opted to combine two of the most explosive issues in British politics by saying that, if we want to leave the court, we may also have to exit the EU.

Last night, MPs said they would not give in to threats - particularly where they involved Britain's membership of the EU. Tory backbencher Dominic Raab said: 'Mr Spielmann had no previous judicial experience before ascending to the heights of this European ivory tower, and it shows. The only thing undermining the credibility of the Strasbourg court are the Mickey Mouse judgments it spews out. He and the other judges should take a long hard look in the mirror before complaining about British democracy.'

The European court has 47 members, many of whom have no prior judicial experience. The court's 'one country, one judge' rule means Liechtenstein, San Marino, Monaco and Andorra each have a seat despite their combined populations being smaller than that of the London borough of Islington.

Judging by the imperial magnificence of the Elysee Palace, France has never ceased to be a world power. Rooms with five-meter (16-foot) ceilings, gilded chandeliers, candelabras and elaborate stucco work are guarded by members of the Republican Guard, who parade in front of the palace gates with their plumes of feathers and bayonets.

The man in charge, on the other hand, seems lonely and small in his palace. He is surrounded by court ushers who make sure that glasses and writing sets are perfectly arranged, and when he enters a conference room, they call out grandly "Monsieur le Président de la République!", to give his attendants time to stand up for him. François Hollande never intended to become a king, but rather a "normal president," as he put it, and now he has to play one nonetheless. He occasionally seems like an actor who has somehow ended up in the wrong play.

Outside, throughout the country, unemployment reaches new highs each month, factories are shut down daily, hundreds of thousands take to the streets to protest gay marriage, and the French are increasingly outraged over a barrage of new political scandals as the country hovers on the cusp of waning global relevance. Yet this roar of dissatisfaction doesn't permeate the walls of Hollande's world. Here, it is quiet, very quiet.

The mandatory registration was enacted as part of amendments made to the Press and Publications Law back in September 2012, which spurred controversy due to its various articles that have been deemed as a government-led effort to restrict free speech online. The amendments included articles that would hold online news sites accountable for the comments left by their readers, prohibiting them from publishing comments that are deemed “irrelevant” or “unrelated” to the article – a restriction that caused several prominent sites to turn off their comments sections. Online news sites would also be required to archive all comments left on their servers for at least six months.

Democratic Senator Ricardo Lara of Bell Gardens says that the policy means gays can join the scouts only until they turn 18.

“Equality does not have an expiration date,” he said. “Discrimination should not be subsidized.” Scouting leaders have objected that the bill would harm local troops that serve 180,000 California youth. Conservative legal aid groups have promised to sue if the measure becomes law on the grounds that it would punish an organization based on its beliefs.

Lara’s SB323 would deny state tax breaks to youth groups that discriminate on the basis of gender identity, race, sexual orientation, nationality, religion or religious affiliation. It passed the Senate with a 27-9 vote, with the minimum two-thirds majority needed to alter the state’s tax policy.

“This bill is about government vilifying our values and abusing its power to penalize, through taxation, those who hold different beliefs and values,” objected Karen England, executive director of the Capitol Resource Institute, which tries to strengthen traditional families.

If you have not heard about this treaty, don't feel bad. Obama has refused to even give Congress a copy of the draft agreement and he has banned members of Congress from attending the negotiations. The plan is to keep this treaty secret until the very last minute and then to railroad it through Congress and have it signed into law by October.

The treaty is known as "the Trans-Pacific Partnership", and the nations that are reported to be involved in the development of this treaty include the United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Peru, Brunei, Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia. Opponents of this treaty refer to it as "the NAFTA of the Pacific", and if it is enacted it will push the deindustrialization of America into overdrive.

The "one world" economic agenda that Barack Obama has been pushing is absolutely killing the US economy. We are losing jobs and businesses at an astounding pace. And each new "free trade" agreement makes things even worse.

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.