EU Inside - 10/03/13, Adelina Marini

Sofia for years has been a city of contrasts, of at first glance conflicting cultures. A city of the beautiful and the ugly, of the best from the European and the worst from the Oriental, a city of clean and dirty, of new and old. A city where alongside a Christian church you will see a mosque or a synagogue. A city of past and present, but with ever more unclear future. Where you can spend a wonderful afternoon in a cosy and amazing tea-room with home-made cake while you watch the tram station across the street where a mother of Roma origin is holding a crying girl by the hand. A city in which it recently became painfully clear that two warring societies live side by side - of those who want a change and stronger integration with Europe and of those who want the status-quo.

CBC News - 10/04/13

Source: ThinkProgress.org - 10/07/13, Annie-Rose Strasser

Between furloughs, car chases, and a self-immolation, the residents of Washington, DC, aren’t having a great October. But by Friday of this week, things could get even worse — and not because of the looming debt crisis.

On October 11th, a group of right-wing truckers is planning to drive to DC to shut down the major commuter highway that circles the city. They’ll continue to block traffic, they say, until they see the arrest of elected officials who have “violated their oath of office.”

ABC News - 10/07/13, Alison Mutler/AP

Romanian prosecutors on Monday charged the deputy prime minister and 74 local officials with election fraud during a referendum that failed to unseat President Traian Basescu.

A majority of those who took part in the July 2012 national referendum voted to impeach Basescu on the grounds that he had overstepped his authority, but the vote was declared invalid because not enough people voted.

More: ABCNews.go.com

The New American - Alex Newman, 5/22/13

A former insider at the World Bank, ex-Senior Counsel Karen Hudes, says the global financial system is dominated by a small group of corrupt, power-hungry figures centered around the privately owned U.S. Federal Reserve. The network has seized control of the media to cover up its crimes, too, she explained. In an interview with The New American, Hudes said that when she tried to blow the whistle on multiple problems at the World Bank, she was fired for her efforts. Now, along with a network of fellow whistleblowers, Hudes is determined to expose and end the corruption. And she is confident of success. 

Citing an explosive 2011 Swiss study published in the PLOS ONE journal on the “network of global corporate control,” Hudes pointed out that a small group of entities — mostly financial institutions and especially central banks — exert a massive amount of influence over the international economy from behind the scenes. “What is really going on is that the world’s resources are being dominated by this group,” she explained, adding that the “corrupt power grabbers” have managed to dominate the media as well. “They’re being allowed to do it.”