Globe Trot: Saudi king to visit Washington as Iran vote looms

SAUDI ARABIA: King Salman of Saudi Arabia will come to Washington next week in his first visit as head of the House of Saud and will meet with President Barack Obama. His timing seems designed to underscore Saudi opposition to the U.S.-brokered Iran deal as Congress enters the final week of a review period.

ARCTIC: Obama will tour the Arctic starting next week to underscore his climate change agenda. The timing of his trip presents photo-ops for record numbers of “hauled-out” walruses sunning on beaches amid declining sea ice.

LEBANON: Thousands are expected to join “You Stink” rallies in Beirut, even as garbage collectors are on the job again. It’s more than likely the widespread protests over garbage collection are a pretext for turning Lebanon into the next Syria.

FRANCE: Did the French media put lives at risk during real-time coverage of the Charlie Hebdo attack in January?

GLOBAL ECONOMY: The Jackson Hole Summit sponsored by the Federal Reserve is getting underway without key monetary policymakers, including Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen. She and others skipped at a time when monetary policy is clearly upsetting global markets (think China and Greece to start). Economist Alejandro Chafuen unravels the growing divide between central bankers who see money as an instrument of the state and those who see it as a common medium of exchange.

I’M READING: The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq by Emma Sky and Qur'ans: Books of Divine Encounter by Keith E. Small, who directs the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics