UK - Wedding watchers have hailed Prince Harry and Meghan Markle for their multicultural ceremony today — saying it broke the Royal mould. Their nuptials at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle featured a rip-roaring sermon from an American preacher and a moving rendition of Stand By Me by a black gospel choir. Ingrid Seward, Editor in Chief of Majesty Magazine, told The Sun Online: "There's never been a royal wedding like it in modern history. It was certainly a departure from tradition and bodes well for the future of the modern monarchy." Their wholly modern ceremony was a far cry from Royal Weddings of previous generations and showed the Monarchy mirroring modern Britain. Mixed-race divorcee Meghan, 36, was embraced with open arms by her in-laws — a welcome not extended to previous newcomers to the family.

USA - The Reverend Al Sharpton has claimed that the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and the mixed-race actress Meghan Markle is evidence that white supremacy is “on its last breath.” Sharpton made the remarks while speaking at his weekly National Action Network rally Saturday in Harlem as the Royal Wedding took place. “When you got little white girls in Wales saying, ‘I want to be like Meghan,’ there’s a shift worldwide that white male supremacy is on its last breath,” Sharpton said. He went on to suggest that now many young girls look up to successful black women, a fact he says is concerning to many white parents, and a fear that he says was exploited by President Donald J Trump.

USA - In a joint statement released Saturday, the United States and China announced that a “consensus” was reached to “substantially reduce” the $370 billion trade imbalance between the two countries. “There was a consensus on taking effective measures to substantially reduce the United States trade deficit in goods with China,” the joint statement said, adding, “To meet the growing consumption needs of the Chinese people and the need for high-quality economic development, China will significantly increase purchases of United States goods and services.” Reducing the United States’ trade deficit with China was a core campaign promise of President Donald Trump.

EUROPE - In March, Trump slapped tariffs of 25 percent on steel imports and 10 percent on imported aluminum, but granted the 28 EU countries a temporary exemption until June 1. He also temporarily exempted big steel producers Canada and Mexico, provided they agree to renegotiate a North American trade deal to his satisfaction. "It's Europe's economic sovereignty, and what we are demanding is that we are exempted without conditions or time limits," French President Emmanuel Macron said in Bulgaria, where EU leaders have gathered for a summit with Balkans countries. Convinced that the US move breaks global trade rules, the EU has drawn up a list of "rebalancing" duties worth some 2.8 billion euros ($3.4 billion) to impose on US products if it is not permanently exempt. It has vowed not to negotiate under threat.

USA - Concordia Publishing House (CPH) is the publishing arm of the 2 million-member Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, a conservative denomination that rejects ordaining women, abortion, and homosexual marriage. According to its website, it publishes “the world’s most widely circulated daily devotional resource,” printing and distributing over 850,000 copies quarterly, and its children’s books have been published in the millions of copies. But none of this matters to the world’s most visited website, Google.com, who has refused to do business with CPH.

VATICAN - Warren Buffett once called them “financial weapons of mass destruction.” Now Pope Francis, of all people, is taking aim at derivatives. In a sweeping critique of global finance released by the Vatican on Thursday, the Holy See singled out derivatives including credit-default swaps for particular scorn. “A ticking time bomb,” the Vatican called them. The unusual rebuke - derivatives rarely reach the level of religious doctrine - is in keeping with Francis’s skeptical view of unbridled global capitalism.

VATICAN - The L’Osservatore Romano is the daily newspaper of the Vatican City State. The paper was founded in 1861. It is classified as a semi-official newspaper of the Holy See. Previous popes condemned the evil of communism. Not Pope Francis. This is a confusing time for the Catholic Church. The paper this week praised communist founder Karl Marx. More than a 100 million people were killed by communist regimes in the 20th century.

MIDDLE EAST - The modern Middle East has been plagued by ruinous wars: country versus country, civil wars with internecine and sectarian bloodletting, and numerous eruptions centered on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But never in the last 70 years have they seemed as interconnected as now with Iran and Saudi Arabia vying for regional control, while Israel also seeks to maintain a military supremacy of its own.

UK - The United Kingdom’s Sentencing Council has proposed Orwellian new guidelines that would make it a criminal offense to engage in free speech online whenever doing so might offend people who aren’t white or who belong to the cult of LGBT. Reports reveal how the Sentencing Council is actively advocating that the perpetrators of online “hate” posts, as it’s calling them, be sentenced to prison time. Social media users who share or even just comment on posts dealing with race or LGBT issues, for instance, would face a minimum six-month prison sentence, while the authors of such posts would face up to three years in prison.

TURKEY - Turkey has urged Islamic countries to review their ties with Israel after dozens of Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire on the Gaza border. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told his ruling party in parliament that Ankara would call an extraordinary summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). "Islamic countries should without fail review their relations with Israel," Premier Yildirim said, adding, “The Islamic world should move as one, with one voice, against this massacre." Yildirim said that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who currently holds the rotating chairmanship of the body, called the OIC summit on Friday.

EUROPE - The European Union is planning to switch payments to the euro for its oil purchases from Iran, eliminating US dollar transactions, a diplomatic source told RIA Novosti. Brussels has been at odds with Washington over the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, which was reached during the administration of Barack Obama. President Donald Trump has pledged to re-impose sanctions against the Islamic Republic. “I’m privy to the information that the EU is going to shift from dollar to euro to pay for crude from Iran,” the source told the agency. Earlier this week, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said that the foreign ministers of the UK, France, Germany, and Iran had agreed to work out practical solutions in response to Washington’s move in the next few weeks. The bloc is reportedly planning to maintain and deepen economic ties with Iran, including in the area of oil and gas supplies.

USA - The pharmaceutical industry has been heavily scrutinized in the past for trying to buy and influence the favor of medical professionals like doctors. But now that flat-out bribery has gotten harder to pull off, the industry has found more insidious means of keeping their fingers in the pot: Funding medical research at the university level. Why spend all that time and effort trying to persuade an established healthcare provider, when they can just win the favor of young professionals to-be?

UK - Meghan Markle - whose mother is African-American and father Dutch-Irish - has spoken of leaving her identity box blank when she was in school. Her father suggested that she should draw her own box. As Britain is becoming increasingly diverse, we need to give spaces to the stories of people who represent the changing face of the nation. The fast-growing mixed-race population is no longer just mixed black and white - it's broader than that, it's also the people who are officially defined as “mixed other” on a document.

UK - A photograph tweeted by a Scottish professor and his Ghanian wife has sparked an online celebration of interracial marriage. On December 26 Professor John Struthers, the Honorary Consul for Ethiopia in Scotland, shared an image with his wife Justina, alongside a post about celebrating diversity. He wrote, "I thought I would share. We've had disapproving looks, 'We are full', 'Is that your wife?' and many more actions questioning our relationship over the last 40-plus years. We haven't wavered! The best way of fighting racism is living your life, standing tall and educating. #Diversity"

USA - The water crisis in Flint, Michigan, became a national news story, and for good reason. Political leaders in the state were finally forced to take steps to stop the poisoning of Flint's drinking water with lead and other toxins, foisted on the community as part of a short-sighted cost-cutting measure. The grim reality, however, is that the problems with American drinking water are diverse and widespread, even if most aren't quite as severe as what happened in Flint. Agricultural waste in particular is poisoning water, especially in rural areas, creating a myriad of health risks.