USA - No doubt I was not the only one left with his mouth gaping open when I read that the archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the worldwide Anglican Church, proclaimed, "Christian doctrine is offense to Muslims."
USA - The U.S. Senate soon could be debating whether everyone in America will each will be spending $2,500 or more to reduce poverty around the world.
VATICAN CITY - Dialogue based on love and truth is the best recipe for achieving peace, says Benedict XVI.
LONDON - The Oscar-winning director, who first found fame playing a young gangster in Brighton Rock, said cinema audiences were once shocked by seeing weapons on screen.
CHINA - China is and has been a huge source of products for blood-doping, steroid-shooting athletes across the sporting spectrum. Its pharmaceutical-medical-industrial complex sells to all comers, to anyone who can pay.
ISRAEL - Despite President Bush's insistence that the military option remains "on the table" for dealing with Iran's nuclear program, Israeli officials have recognized that a U.S. air strike on Iranian nuclear sites is increasingly unlikely in the waning days of the Bush Administration.
GERMANY - US presidential hopeful Barack Obama has told crowds in Berlin that the US and Europe have drifted apart and it is time for them to come together again.
ISRAEL - The fast days of 17 Tammuz and 9 Av, and the time between them, commemorate the tragic process of the destruction of the two Holy Temples in Jerusalem.
Nine EU states are getting ready to reinforce their legal co-operation at the EU level by agreeing a common divorce law, by-passing Sweden's veto and posing questions about a "two-speed Europe."
The European Commission has raised the stakes in its tussle with Washington over visas by suggesting that from the beginning of next year US diplomats be required to apply for a visa for travel to the European Union.
Fraser Nelson argues in the Spectator that the most pressing foreign policy problem of the moment is what to do about Pakistan, despite American and British reluctance to admit it.
EUROPE - Commission report reveals EU loses 6.5 million euros a day to fraud and irregularities - serious problems in Commission's own accounts.
Peter Sutherland, one of the founders of the WTO, said that if this week's talks fail "Doha is dead".
In an interview with the FT, Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague has said a future Conservative government would seek to restore full British control over employment law and social policy while campaigning against the "the centralising ratchet" of the EU.
ISRAEL - A new organization named Kulanu ("all of us"), which aims to unite the national-religious factions into one party, held its first conference in Jerusalem on Wednesday. Kulanu intends to establish a committee that will create a system through which members of the new party will be chosen.