"After three years of a disconnect in Israeli-Turkish relations," he wrote, "I decided that this is the time to rebuild them. The changing reality around us forces us to continually re-examine our relations with the countries surrounding us in the region. In the last three years, the state of Israel has made several attempts to end the disconnect between us and Turkey.”

"The fact that the crisis in Syria is getting worse by the minute was, for me, a central consideration. Syria is crumbling, and the huge, advanced stockpiles of weapons within it are starting to fall into the hands of different elements. The great danger is that the chemical weapon stockpiles will fall into the hands of terror groups.”

"The reality in Syria, which includes, among other things, jihadist elements that have begun to establish their presence next to our border on the Golan, creates great challenges for our security establishment. We are following the goings-on there and are prepared to respond accordingly.”

"It is important that Turkey and Israel, which border on Syria, are able to communicate with each other, and this is also desirable with regard to additional regional challenges.”

Emeritus Pope Benedict embraced his luncheon guest on Pope Francis' arrival at the helipad at the papal summer villa at Castel Gandolfo, which has become Benedict's temporary home. Benedict, who stepped down from the papacy at the end of February, wore a white padded jacket and looked rather frail in comparison to 76-year-old Pope Francis, nine years his junior.

The two white-clad clerics then prayed together in the villa's private chapel where Pope Francis insisted on kneeling side by side with his predecessor, rather than using the padded papal kneeler prepared for him. "No! We are brothers, we pray together!" Francis told Benedict in a gesture of humility.

Pope Francis has arrived in Rome “from the ends of the earth,” and he is innovating the manner of governing the Church from on high, starting with himself. The reform of the curia will come. And many other things will come as well. But after “a certain time,” he has cautioned.

Meanwhile, he has told all of the heads of the curia whose mandates ended with the resignation of his predecessor to get back to work. “Temporarily,” and “donec aliter provideatur,” until he, the new pope, decides. Since March 13 the Vatican curia has been a tremulous army of functionaries without a certain future.

The new pope wants to be the bishop of Rome for all intents and purposes, as he implied immediately on the first Sunday of his pontificate, with the Mass celebrated in the parish of St Ann on the border of the Vatican and the Borgo, amid a rejoicing crowd. He will go from church to church, he will visit center and periphery, “for the evangelization of this city that is so beautiful.” In direct contact with the people of the diocese which now is his “bride.”

Above all, Pope Francis loves to call himself “bishop of Rome.” But he also holds firm, and said so immediately, that “the Church of Rome is that which presides in charity over all the Churches.”

Today the tiny island's 56 MPs have a stark choice, to implement draconian capital controls and to put the country's largest banks into receivership or else face exit from the euro and a dramatic economic crash.

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, warned Cyprus this morning that it had to abandon an economy built on a financial sector, fuelled by Russian cash, which is eight times larger than Cypriot GDP. "It must realise its current business model is dead," she said

“They have no answer for that question. They refuse to answer that,” Huelscamp told Infowars and We Are Change reporter Luke Rudkowski on Friday. Meanwhile, the Social Security Administration has reportedly purchased 174,000 hollow-point bullets - which are designed to explode on impact for maximum damage - for agents who investigate corruption and other crimes.

But why does this government agency need a type of ammunition for Main Street, USA, that has been categorically banned for use in international war by the Geneva Convention? As former Marine Richard Mason told WHPTV News in Pennsylvania recently, hollow-point bullets are not the best choice for training purposes because they are more expensive than standard rounds.

“We never trained with hollow points, we didn't even see hollow points my entire four-and-a-half years in the Marine Corps,” Mason said. “It is utterly inconceivable that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is planning a coup d’etat against President Obama and the Congress to install herself as Supreme Ruler of the United States of America,” Ralph Benko wrote in the Forbes op-ed piece. “There, however, are real signs that the department bureaucrats are running amok.”

Certain types of bacteria found in the pre-cut salad bags can be almost impossible to kill, Professor Hugh Pennington said, unless the leaves are irradiated – a process the public would oppose. His claim follows a Health Protection Agency investigation into an outbreak of salad-linked Cryptosporidium infections that affected around 300 people in England and Scotland in May 2012.

Professor Pennington said: "It is generally safer to eat a burger than the salad that goes with it. Despite the recent horsemeat and other scandals, the meat can be traced and through a rigorous process that checks for its quality etc. That does not exist to the same rigour for salad. You can only make vegetables safe by cooking and you can`t obviously do that with salad."

Professor Pennington also pointed out that a bean sprout farm in northern Germany was identified as the most likely source of many of the infections in the E. coli outbreak that left 22 people dead in 2011. The farm, located in Uelzen, south of Hamburg, was the epicentre of the outbreak that has also made more than 2,000 people ill.

The European sovereign debt crisis has fundamentally changed Europe’s geopolitical map. Instead of Europe being divided into West and East as it was during the Cold War, the Continent has become divided into a relatively prosperous North and a chaotic South.

Instead of Europe being led by France and Germany with Britain playing a balancing act, leadership has fallen squarely on Germany’s shoulders. It is no longer about a more European Germany. It is about more German Europe. Today it is a different Europe: Germany may be first among equals, but it is still committed to the European Union.

Xi Jinping is returning the courtesy bestowed last year, when President Vladimir Putin included Beijing into the first foreign trip of his third presidential term. This exchange of first foreign visits is seen as the two powers’ effort to bolster their common clout in the world arena now that Russian-Chinese relations “are the best in their centuries-long history,” as Vladimir Putin put it in his recent interview to ITAR-TASS.

According to the Russian president, the two countries are working on quite an ambitious common goal “to shape a new, more just world order.” What they have so far been doing to achieve it is they jointly countered US and its allies’ position on most pressing issues like the Syrian crisis, the situation around Iran, and Middle East settlement.

“Both countries share a strong common interest in seeking a more multipolar world and preventing the United States from dominating the global political and economic order,” Joseph Cheng, political analyst and professor at Hong Kong City University told RT. China and Russia have on many occasions made use of their right of veto in the UN Security Council to curb intervention and aggression.

In Nicosia, the country's biggest bank urged politicians to make haste and cut a deal with their EU partners as parliament considered proposals to nationalize pension funds, pool state assets and split the country's second-largest bank in a desperate effort to satisfy those exasperated European allies.

The governor of the Central Bank, Panicos Demetriades, warned political leaders the country would face a disorderly bankruptcy on Tuesday unless they approved the bills, an official present at the talks said. "The next few hours will determine the future of the country," government spokesman Christos Stylianides said before the parliamentary debate. "We must all assume our share of the responsibility."

Even if the measures are approved, there was no confirmation they would raise the 5.8 billion euros demanded by the EU in return for a 10 billion euro ($12.9 billion) bailout to avoid a default. The biggest local bank, the Bank of Cyprus, urged the government to go back and make a deal from the European Union, under which larger deposits over 100,000 euros, would be taxed. It was preferable, it said, to a collapse of the system and a return to the Cypriot pound which would wipe out assets.

In detailed notes of the call seen by Reuters, one official described emotions as running "very high", making it difficult to come up with rational solutions, and referred to "open talk in regards of (Cyprus) leaving the euro zone". The call was among members of the Eurogroup Working Group, which consists of deputy finance ministers or senior treasury officials from the 17 euro zone countries as well as representatives from the European Central Bank and the European Commission. The group is chaired by Austria's Thomas Wieser.

Cyprus decided not to take part in the call, a decision that several participants described as troubling and reflecting the wider confusion surrounding the island's predicament. "The (Cypriot) parliament is obviously too emotional and will not decide on anything, if Cyprus does not even feel that they can attend the call it is a big problem for us," the French representative said, according to the notes seen by Reuters."We have never seen this."

"The economy is going to tank in Cyprus no matter what," the notes quoted him as saying. "Restrictions on capital will probably be imposed," he said, adding that further conference calls would be organised in the coming days.

The European Union, the IMF and the ECB are pushing Cyprus into bankruptcy while risking a contagion effect that could lead to the meltdown of the eurozone. European leaders have already bailed out Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy. Why is the Cyprus bailout so special? Why do the European leaders prefer to push the country into bankruptcy and raid the Cypriot bank accounts instead of saving it?

The gold reserves of Cyprus stand at 13.9 tons. While not a big amount in itself, these reserves represent “physical gold” not “paper gold” which makes it very valuable from a market manipulation perspective. If the central banks and financial institutions that are suppressing the gold prices are running short on “physical gold”, then each ounce of real, assayed, not rehypothecated gold is priceless.

Time has shown that the gold market manipulators are extremely powerful and will go to any lengths to keep the gold and silver prices down. If they have to force a country into bankruptcy in order to get 13.9 tons of physical gold and use it to suppress the prices, they’ll do it. If they have to create a distraction for the media, like a “special levy on bank accounts”, they’ll do it. If they are successful, it is very likely that Italian or Spanish gold reserves will be targeted next.