Good Morning Australia!  Egypt braces for what could be a revolutionary weekend, Barack Obama treads lightly around any potential visit to Nelson Mandela, and Japan is caught wasting money meant for disaster recovery on enriching power companies, killing whales, and counting turtles.

Egyptian troops are patrolling streets in several cities after clashes between opponents and supporters of the ruling Muslim Brotherhood party.  Two people were killed in Alexandria, including an American who for some reason stopped to watch an attack on a Muslim Brotherhood office.  This was still a full 2 days before the massive anti-Muslim Brotherhood rallies expected on Sunday, 30 June.

US President Barack Obama arrived in South Africa for the second leg of his African tour.  America’s first black president is not ruling out a visit to SA’s first black president, although Obama is leaving up to the ailing Mandela’s family, saying, “the last thing I want to do is to be in any way obtrusive at a time when the family is concerned with Nelson Mandela's condition.”  94-year old Mandela has been in hospital for weeks with a lung infection.

The father of NSA Intel leaker Edward Snowden is proposing some conditions under which his son might return to the Untied States to face charges:  No detention or imprisonment prior to trial, no gag order, and allowing Edward Snowden to choose the venue for the trial.  In America, criminal defendants are pretty much not allowed to choose ANY of that, it is up to the discretion of the judge.  It’s not clear if the elder Snowden is actually speaking for his son, or is just laying out a wish list.  Edward is still believed to be hunkered down in a capsule hotel in the international transport section of the Moscow airport.

An intense heat wave is gripping the Western United States, with high temperatures of 44 C to 47 C forecast for Las Vegas, 47.2 C for Phoenix.  The temperature in Death Valley, California could get as high as 53.9 C.  But it’s not just the desert, the temperature is way up above normal all the way north to normally cooler climes in Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington.

A senior Vatican cleric and accountant, an Italian spy, and a financial executive have been arrested for allegedly helping sneak more than A$28 Million into Italy from Switzerland by plane.  The arrests came two days after Pope Francis announced an investigation into the Vatican bank.  Prosecutors say 61-year old Monsignor Nunzio Scarano was known as “monsignor 500” for his fondness for high denomination Euro notes.

Police in Chile raided several secondary school that were being “occupied” by youth protesters demanding free, quality education for all.  The young activists say Chile’s state schools simply do not allow middle class and poor youth to get a level of education to compete with the elites, who can afford universities on par with anything in the world.  Cops arrested 122 people, many of them teenagers.  The schools are scheduled to be used as polling places for this weekend’s preliminary round in the Presidential elections, in which Chile’s first female president Michelle Bachelet is favored to be return to the office she held in the previous decade.

Taxpayer funds sex aside to help the victims and areas affected by the 3/11 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in Japan have been diverted to power companies.  It comes out to more than A$110 Million of money pledged for disaster recovery, instead being used by power companies to pay interest on debt from bank loans used to buy fossil fuels.  Many are upset over previous disclosures that disaster money has been used to finance Japan’s controversial whale hunt and on paying people to count turtles.