Israeli troops scuffle with European diplomats on a humanitarian mission – A massive super-typhoon is threatening the Philippines, Taiwan, and China – And a prominent UK politician acts like a loony on camera.

Israel is under criticism after troops roughed up a group of European diplomats, and confiscated their emergency aid they had been trying to deliver to some Bedouin Palestinians whose homes were destroyed.  Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldiers threw sound grenades at the diplomats, aid workers and locals in the occupied West Bank.  They physically pulled a French diplomat out of the aid truck before driving away with its contents, leaving her crumbled on the ground.  The Israeli army and police declined to comment, and officials say they are investigating.

Syria gave details of some of its 1,000 tons of chemical weapons to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.  Under a US-Russia brokered agreement, Syria is to turn over all of its chemical weapons for destruction by the middle of next year.

Typhoon Usagi lashed the northern Philippines with harsh winds as strong as 240 kilometers per hour and heavy rains as the eye moves between the Philippines and Taiwan.  Usagi was forecast to make landfall in southern China on Sunday with its outer edges expected to hit the coast of Guangdong and Hong Kong. 

North Korea has called off plans to reunite families that found themselves split by the border, blaming the “hostility” of unidentified conservatives in the South.  It’s a setback after weeks of gradual improvement in ties, after hitting a low with North Korea’s nuclear tests at the beginning of the year.

For a third time, a Brazilian rancher has been convicted of the 2005 murder of an environmentalist Roman Catholic nun from America, a case that caused international outrage.  Previous convictions against Vitalmiro Bastos Moura were overturned, but prosecutors didn’t give up.  Dorothy Stang was shot to death, authorities say for blocking Moura’s attempts to seize rainforest land in Brazil’s northern Para state.

Another embarrassment of intolerance for the Euro-skeptic UK Independence Party (UKIP), already criticized for being a bastion of racism and generally odd mental health.  UKIP’s highest profile member of the Europe Parliament, Godfrey Bloom, had his whip removed for describing a room of women as “sluts” and hitting a journalist over the head following a rant about racism.  Bloom for some reason had survived earlier incidents in which he called for Britain to end to aid to “bongo-bongo land” and asked why businesses would ever hire "a lady of child-bearing age".

Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown was ready to call out the troops on Britain’s streets during the economic meltdown of 2008.  Former Labor Party spin-doctor Damian McBride in his new book claims Brown feared “anarchy” and Brits “breaking the windows and helping themselves” if banks shut down and supermarkets couldn’t take cards.

In the tech sector’s longest and most gruesome death spiral, the company that won’t go away Blackberry announced it will cut 4,500 jobs; that’s 40 percent of its worldwide workforce.  Blackberry is expected to report a quarterly loss of nearly US$1 Billion next week, mainly the result of a write-off of unsold BlackBerry smartphones.  The company has shipped 2.7 million of its Z10 phones, less than half of what it expected.