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.

The closely-watched ISM index of US factories tumbled through the “boom-bust line” of 50 to 49, far below expectations. It is the lowest since the depths of the crisis in mid-2009 and a clear sign that US budget cuts are starting to squeeze the economy. New orders plunged 3.5 to 48.8 on weak foreign demand and reduced federal contracts.

The news came hours after HSBC said its index for China also fell below 50, a major inflexion point for the world’s industrial workshop.

“This is not a good moment for the world economy,” said David Bloom, currency chief at HSBC. “The manufacturing indices came in weaker than expected in China, Korea, India and Russia, and then we got America’s ISM.”

“We thought we had a clear picture that the US was recovering, Japan was printing money and we were back to happy days, and now suddenly a huge spanner has been thrown in the works. ”

A wave of violence in Turkey has seen riot police clash with protesters for a fourth day running in different parts of the country. Security forces used tear gas and water cannons as the demonstrators responded with stones and built barricades. In the capital, Ankara, the activists also tried to break through police lines and attack the prime minister's office. Bagci believes the scale of protests became a real shock for Erdogan, who previously considered his policies to be flawless and supported by the Turkish population.

In his first major intervention in the debate, the Most Rev Justin Welby said he could not support David Cameron’s same-sex marriage Bill in its current form. He warned that the reform “weakened” the concept of the “normal” family as the basis for a strong community and replaced traditional marriage with something “less good”. Archbishop Welby has been reluctant to join the public condemnation of the reforms, despite widespread opposition from Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Muslims and other faith organisations.

The Church of England has previously adopted a more conciliatory position towards the reforms, acknowledging that parliament was likely to pass the Bill and seeking to secure legal protections from ministers to stop churches being forced to conduct gay marriages. Speaking on the first day of debate on the Bill in the House of Lords, the Archbishop warned that legalising same sex marriages would be a social problem, not a faith issue. “We think that traditional marriage is a cornerstone of society,” he told peers. “It is not at heart a faith issue,” he said. “It is about the general social good. So with much regret but entire conviction I cannot support the Bill as it stands.”

"Yeah, our friends are giving it to us about being Internet famous," said 18-year-old Dylan Meehan, a senior at Carmel High School. "We've never had any problems at all," added 17-year-old senior Brad Taylor. "As a matter of fact, before the results, people were telling us ahead of time, 'You guys are going to win hands down.'"

The gay couple's selection — a first at Carmel High — has become an online sensation, driven by a yearbook photo of the smiling boys in a close embrace. A friend's blog with the photo had more than 110,000 hits Monday, and it was cited in stories on several major news sites.