[One of the news anchors,] Michaels explained to the local newspaper one of the main reasons for their frustration, saying that: “It’s a culmination of ongoing occurrences that took place the last several years and basically involved upper management practices that we both strongly disagreed with,” she explained. “It’s a little complicated, but we were expected to do somewhat unbalanced news, politically, in general.”

Michaels continued: “There was a constant disrespecting and belittling of staff and we both felt there was a lack of knowledge from ownership and upper management in running a newsroom to the extent that I was not allowed to structure and direct them professionally,” Michaels explained. “I couldn’t do everything I wanted to as a news director. There was a regular undoing of decisions.”

Both of them also said that they had very little freedom in the issues that they covered and that they were forced to present controversial information from a propagandized perspective. This definitely speaks to the immense amount of control that comes from the top down in the media, which is the reason why only one version of reality is presented through mainstream sources.

“The guard's missile-carrying cruiser Moskva and the big landing ship Saratov have arrived in the designated area already on November 20, the border patrol ship Smetlivy and the big landing ship Novocherkassk joined the foresaid warships 1-2 days later, after refuelling from the big sea tanker Ivan Bubnov. The full convoy of the warships of the Black Sea Fleet arrived in the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea in order to evacuate Russian citizens from the Gaza Strip in case of escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” the Russian naval source said.

The cardinals, the closest aides of the Pope, come from the Philippines, India, Lebanon, Nigeria, Colombia and the US. Analysts say it is unusual for the Pope to select only non-Europeans. The Pope told the congregation that the Catholic Church belongs to the whole human race, not just one group, and was a church for all peoples. All six new cardinals are younger than 80 and therefore will likely be eligible to vote for a new Pope when the current pontiff dies.

By adding six non-Europeans to the number of 114 cardinal electors, the Pope has slightly shifted the geographical demographic of the body which will ultimately choose his successor, though Europeans still make up the majority, at 51%.

Cardinal-designate John Onaiyekan is the archbishop of Abuja in Nigeria, where Christians and Muslims each make up about half the population, and dialogue between the two faiths is increasingly important, says the BBC's David Willey in Rome.

The concept is known as Receptive Ecumenism, introduced by UK theologian Paul D Murray during a visit to SA in July. He said greater unity among churches was possible but only if a counter-instinctive move was made away from churches thinking others should be more like them and instead asking what they must learn.

This could include anything from the methods of welfare and education groups to how churches deal with governance and finances. SA Council of Churches executive officer Geraldine Hawkes said it was hard for Christian churches to foster unity in families, workplaces and government if they were not leading by example.

"I think it's (about) recognising something that they might value in another church and to be able to go to that church, have a coffee with the people there and ask how they do things well," she said. "If people see the church as divided and at odds with one another, what hope is there for Gaza and Israel?"

The SA Council of Churches' member denominations include the Anglican, Catholic, Uniting, Presbyterian and Greek Orthodox.

Nigel Farage said: 'The life of a eurocrat is easy, with high salaries, low taxes and generous pension schemes not to mention numerous holidays, 'subsistence allowances' and 'relocation allowances' and money for each child they have.

'Many have Friday afternoons off, there are subsidised restaurants and cafes and of course discounts in shops if they show their parliament pass. And yet they have the audacity to strike outside the budget talks when the rest of the EU were demanding that yet more of their taxes went into the EU slush fund. No wonder the majority of people in the UK want to leave the EU.'

In these letters, Israel urged the United Nations to act against repeated rockets attacks from Gaza against Israeli civilians, and, at a minimum, to speak out and condemn the attacks.

“Inaction today could help ignite an escalation of conflict tomorrow,” Israel warned the UN, while exercising astonishing measures of restraint that no other country facing a similar onslaught of rockets has ever shown. Yet we are unaware of any UN action whatsoever taken in response.

“We now have clear evidence from a large international study that the initial use of [Avandia] is more effective than standard therapies,” a senior vice president of GlaxoSmithKline, Lawson Macartney, said in a news release.

What only careful readers of the article would have gleaned is the extent of the financial connections between the drugmaker and the research. The trial had been funded by GlaxoSmithKline, and each of the 11 authors had received money from the company. Four were employees and held company stock. The other seven were academic experts who had received grants or consultant fees from the firm.

Whether these ties altered the report on Avandia may be impossible for readers to know. But while sorting through the data from more than 4,000 patients, the investigators missed hints of a danger that, when fully realized four years later, would lead to Avandia’s virtual disappearance from the United States:

The drug raised the risk of heart attacks. A Food and Drug Administration scientist later estimated that the drug had been associated with 83,000 heart attacks and deaths.

According to Debka, US troops will soon be en route to the Sinai peninsula, Egyptian territory in North Africa that’s framed by the Suez Canal on the West and Israel on the East. In its northeast most point, Sinai is but a stone’s throw from Palestinian-controlled Gaza, and according to Debka, Hamas fighters there have been relying on Iranian arms smugglers to supply them with weaponry by way of Egypt.

Debka reports this week that Sinai will soon be occupied by US troops, who were promised by President Barack Obama to Israel’s leaders as a condition that a ceasefire be called. Once deployed, the Americans will intervene with the rumored arms trade orchestrated by Iranians, ideally cutting off supplies for Hamas while at the same time serving as a thorn in the side of Iran.

“Once the missile and arms consignments depart Iranian ports or Libyan arms bazaars, Tehran has no direct control of their transit from point to point through Egypt until they reach Sinai and their Gaza destination,” Debka reports. “All the same, a US special forces operation against the Sinai segment of the Iranian smuggling route would count as the first overt American military strike against an Iranian military interest.”

The decision to send US troops to Sinai in exchange for a ceasefire was reportedly arranged early Wednesday morning after President Obama made a deal over the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “By opening the Sinai door to an American troop deployment for Israel’s defense, this recognizes that the US force also insures Israel against Cairo revoking or failing to honor the peace treaty Egypt signed with Israel in 1979,” adds Debka.

According to their sources, US troops are expected in Egypt early next week. Meanwhile, American forces have all but surrounded Iran and are stationed in countless bases across the Middle East.

When he presented his proposals for taming banks in late September, Peer Steinbrück was once again spoiling for a fight. The Social Democratic candidate for the Chancellery in next year's general election railed against the chase for short-term returns and excesses within the sector and harshly criticized the "market-conforming democracy" in which politics and people's lives had become mere playthings of the financial markets.

Steinbrück's speech lasted half an hour, or a minute for each of the pages of a document he had prepared on the same issue. The paper lists a whole series of suggested regulations, most of which seem entirely sensible. Most interesting, however, is what's missing from the paper - and what has thus far been absent from almost all of the proposals of other financial reformers: the disastrous degree to which countries are now dependent on banks.

As European countries have dug themselves deeper and deeper into debt in recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in this dependence. Governments are addicted to borrowed money - and banks meet this need by purchasing sovereign bonds. As an unspoken reward, the banks expect nothing less than a guarantee of their own survival. Should a bank run the risk of collapse, the state is expected to use taxpayer money to prop it up.

It is a situation which suggests that policymakers should act with caution, but does not justify the complete lack of action. Still, the benefits of doing nothing are clear. It allows states to continue piling up debt.

The Judges' Club, a body representing judges across Egypt, called for a strike during a meeting interrupted with chants demanding the "downfall of the regime" - the rallying cry in the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak last year. Mursi's political opponents and supporters, representing the divide between newly empowered Islamists and their critics, called for rival demonstrations on Tuesday over a decree that has triggered concern in the West.

Issued late on Thursday, it marks an effort by Mursi to consolidate his influence after he successfully sidelined Mubarak-era generals in August. The decree defends from judicial review decisions taken by Mursi until a new parliament is elected in a vote expected early next year. It also shields the Islamist-dominated assembly writing Egypt's new constitution from a raft of legal challenges that have threatened the body with dissolution, and offers the same protection to the Islamist-controlled upper house of parliament.

Egypt's highest judicial authority, the Supreme Judicial Council, said the decree was an "unprecedented attack" on the independence of the judiciary. The Judges' Club, meeting in Cairo, called on Mursi to rescind it.