US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke made it clear in congressional testimony this week that the central bank could very well entertain a change in policy sooner than many had predicted. That would mean providing less stimulus to the economy by cutting back on its bond buying program.

And of course, there are other potential flashpoints. Will an heir to Bernanke emerge? Will the annual monetary policy symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, this August matter without Ben Bernanke?

Independent living enables disabled people with high support needs to be in control of when and how they receive assistance with everyday tasks. It’s about choosing when you get up, go to the toilet, eat a meal, get dressed, go out etc. Many of us would argue that these are basic human rights which non-disabled people tend to take for granted. But when a person is unable to perform such tasks for themselves, a cost gets attached to them and people’s rights get forgotten.

Furthermore, this cut is nothing to do with the now-familiar rhetoric of scroungers and cheats. It is directly aimed at around 19,000 disabled people with the highest support needs. Just off the top of my head, we users of the ILF include actors, TV presenters, PhD students, chief executives, consultants, trainers, a life peer and at least two stand-up comedians. Many of us have pushed the boundaries for disability rights in our communities and/or respective fields of work.

I believe our society as a whole will be the poorer if we have to move into residential institutions, as many of us fear will happen, because funding is no longer available for us to live independently in the community.

Aid organizations, such as the German Agro Action, are - in principle - sworn to neutrality and non-partisanship, however, at the demand of the German government, they are taking up activities in regions under rebel control, aimed at "winning hearts and minds" in favor of the rebels.

Because this is in clear violation of Syria's sovereignty, an influential German daily has characterized this mission as "humanitarian intervention without a UN mandate" - "not with tanks and infantry but with trucks and development aid workers." Germany is promoting insurgents also in areas under Islamist control.

He also quoted medical sources in Saudi Arabia as saying that the king’s vital organs, including his heart, kidneys and lungs, have stopped functioning. Doctors are said to have used a defibrillator on him several times. He is also reported to be alive with the help of a ventilator. The 89-year-old king’s health has declined over the past few years, during which he has been hospitalized several times.

Failing health, old age as well as the death of the king’s half-brothers have raised concerns about the future of the oil-rich country in the face of anti-government demonstrations.

The pontiff exhorted Mafiosi to change their ways, issuing the call Sunday, a day after the beatification of an Italian priest in Palermo who was slain in 1993 by mobsters after he defiantly preached against the Mafia in a neighborhood where Cosa Nostra held sway.

Francis told a crowd in St Peter's Square the Mafia killed the Reverend Giuseppe Puglisi because he tried to keep youths from being recruited by mobsters. He said it pains him when he thinks of all the people exploited by organized crime. Mobsters control rackets for prostitution, trafficking in illegal immigration and other forms of slavery.

Puglisi was beatified in a ceremony Saturday in Palermo, the Sicilian capital where he worked in a mobster-infested, poor neighborhood. He was slain in 1993, a few months after Pope John Paul II visited Sicily and urged priests to rally the faithful against organized crime.

The warning comes in the wake of David Cameron's visit to Washington, which was primarily intended as a joint promotion of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with Barack Obama, which the prime minister said could bring £10 billion a year to the UK alone, but which was overshadowed by a cabinet rebellion back in London.

The threat by Cameron's ministers to back a UK exit in a referendum on the EU raised doubts in Washington on whether Britain would still be part of the deal once it had been negotiated. More immediately, Obama administration officials were concerned that the uncertainty over Britain's future would further complicate what is already a hard sell in Congress, threatening a central pledge in the president's State of the Union address in February.

Wolfgang Schäuble sounded almost like a new convert extolling the wonders of heaven as he raved about his latest conclusions on the subject of saving the euro. "We need more investment, and we need more programs," the German finance minister announced after a meeting with Vitor Gaspar, his Portuguese counterpart.

The role he was slipping into last Wednesday was new for Schäuble. The man who had persistently maintained his image as an austerity commissioner is suddenly a champion of growth. If Germany couldn't manage to trigger an economic recovery, "our success story would not be complete," he said. And as if to convince even the die-hard skeptics, he added: "The German government is always prepared to help."

After three years of crisis policy, it was an impression shared by very few people in countries like Portugal, Spain and Greece. They are more likely to associate Schäuble and his boss, Chancellor Angela Merkel, with austerity mandates ushering in hardship, deprivation and unemployment.

But a new way of thinking has recently taken hold in the German capital. In light of record new unemployment figures among young people, even the intransigent Germans now realize that action is needed. "If we don't act now, we risk losing an entire generation in Southern Europe," say people close to Schäuble.

About 200 young people, many of them masked, pelted police lines with bottles, stones, fireworks and flares. The crowd – led bizarrely at one stage by a lone bagpiper – chased and beat up TV crews and press photographers. Police and gendarmes responded with tear gas and baton charges. Priests in long cassocks observed the battles without attempting to intervene. Other, more peaceful demonstrators stood in lines or circles nearby holding hands, praying and singing as tear gas and red smoke from flares swirled around them.

Earlier about 400,000 people, including many children, had defied warnings of possible far-right violence and marched in peaceful protest against France's newly enacted law permitting same-sex marriage. "Frigide [Frigide Barjot (pun on Brigitte Bardot) is a French humorist, columnist and political activist. She has become prominent for her campaigns against same-sex marriage in France and LGBT adoption] was wrong not to come," said Alain, 38, a lawyer who was demonstrating with his wife and two young sons. "The threat of violence is nothing in comparison to the threat we face from this law. This is just the beginning of a programme of legislation to impose the socialist ideology of one gender and to destroy the foundations of the family."

Many of the banners and signs in the protests made similarly apocalyptic claims about the importance of the law. The largest of the marches, starting in the well-heeled 16th arrondissement of Paris, was led by a 30ft-wide banner that proclaimed: "No to a change of civilisation."

Defense Minister General Ahmad Vahidi was quoted as saying the new weapon systems give Iranian forces the ability to "crush the enemy" with the simultaneous launching of long-range surface-to-surface missiles, according to Fars, the semi-official Iranian news agency.

The report did not specify the type of missile that would be fired, or provide details on the number of launchers allegedly deployed. Iran’s military does possess surface-to-surface missiles that are capable of traveling over 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles), able to reach targets inside Israel and US bases in the region.

The stand-off resulted in a tense military parade as the US sent three full US carrier groups, each accompanied by dozens of support vessels and carrying more aircraft than the entire Iranian air force, to participate in the Hormuz exercises.

The 28-year-old was filmed with blood on his hands, ranting at passers-by, as he waited to confront police after Lee Rigby was hacked to death. ‘He was not a coward, he did not flee the scene,’ said Bakri, who repeatedly refused to condemn the slaughter. To many people, Bakri’s comments will demonstrate why police should monitor comments by radical clerics and why search engines such as Google should do more to shut down extremist websites.

Metropolitan Police investigating the killing of Lee Rigby, a 25-year-old soldier who was run over by attackers then butchered by knives, arrested three more men in the murder investigation Saturday. Stun guns were used on two of the three men, aged 24 and 28, police said.

The latest arrests came as an estimated 1,500 members of an extremist right-wing group called the English Defense League marched in the northern English city of Newcastle, chanting Rigby's name. In the southern English city of Portsmouth, police arrested two men for a racially motivated assault as hundreds of demonstrators gathered near one mosque, while several more people were detained for alleged racist offenses elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the far-right British National Party announced it would rally supporters next weekend on the spot where the young soldier was killed. "Has the horror of Woolwich woken you up too? ... Join the British resistance," British National Party leader Nick Griffin said in a video address Saturday to supporters announcing his plans for a "Stand Up to Muslim Terror" rally at the scene of the crime, where thousands already have left floral bouquets paying tribute to the soldier.

Today there were fears that the Paris attack was a copy-cat crime and that a radical Muslim might once more be responsible. Police in the French capital described the attacker as a being ‘bearded, of North African origin and wearing a light coloured jihab’ under a jacket. He pounced on the soldier outside a Virgin store in La Defence, the business district of the city which was packed with Saturday afternoon shoppers.

The 25-year-old soldier was knifed as a he patrolled around the suburban railway station for RER, a service which links the French capital with the suburbs. Pierre-Andre Peyvel, prefect of the Hauts-de-Seine district, said the soldier's wounds were 'serious enough'. The soldier was stabbed repeatedly, most notably in the throat. The source said that the soldier’s life was not in danger, but he was ‘badly hurt’.

Officers are battling to keep the capital under control after hundreds of cars were torched, a police station set alight and fire services kept from a major blaze by a stone-throwing mob of youths. To make matters worse, rioting has now spread to Sweden’s two other major cities, Gothenburg and Malmo.

Left-wing activists came forward to accuse police of racism – a charge strongly denied by the Stockholm force. Growing unrest turned to violence last Sunday in a north-western suburb called Husby – where more than 80 per cent of the residents are from overseas, mostly Turkey, Somalia and the Middle East. Trouble then spread to some of the city’s most deprived areas, shattering the country’s proud claim that it is a template for a successful and ethnically diverse society.

Government leaders have been stunned by the ferocity of the violence in a country which has long been touted as a paragon of social justice. For decades, supporters of multiculturalism have pointed to Sweden as a classic example of a society which allows immigrants to continue practising their own culture while living peacefully alongside their host communities.

Organized by the 'March Against Monsanto' movement, an estimated 200,000 activists will participate in the massive campaign spanning six continents, 40 nations, and at least 48 US states. Angered by the lack of action from governments on the issue, activists in hundreds of cities – including New York, Chicago, Montreal, Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Moscow and Melbourne – will stage coordinated protests against Monsanto and demand a ban on Genetically Engineered and Genetically Modified Organisms (GE/GMOs).

Initially a small, grassroots event, the march became a globe-spanning movement through the efforts of local activists and environmentalists. The protest is being organized on Facebook and Google Documents, where users can find a list of events near their location. In an interview with Bloomberg earlier this month, Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant portrayed those who do not agree with his business tactics as snobs: “There is this strange kind of reverse elitism: If I’m going to do this, then everything else shouldn’t exist,” he said. “In the US, we’ve got a system that works.”

In their ongoing struggle to reach a wider audience through the mainstream media, anti-GMO activists have outlined a number of solutions and goals for which they are advocating, including the "labeling of GE/GMOs so that consumers can make those informed decisions easier," "further scientific research on the health effects of GE/GMOs," and, perhaps most importantly, "taking to the streets to show the world and Monsanto that we won't take these injustices quietly."

"We stress the danger of the Iranian nuclear program to the security of the whole region," Prince Saud said Saturday in a joint news conference with Indian External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid in the city of Jiddah. Turning to Syria, he also that Syrian President Bashar Assad and his regime should have no role in the country's future.

Saudi Arabia announced last week the arrest of 10 more members of an alleged Iranian spy ring.