A startling 60 per cent of young people say they are first exposed to pornography at age 14 – or even younger. Pornography plays a key role in shaping how young people feel about their bodies, about relationships and about one another. Along with other media, pornography tends to objectify women, and several studies have demonstrated the link between this objectification and both sexist attitudes and violence against women and girls.

This plays out in our schools. One in three girls say they experience ‘groping’ or unwanted sexual touching at school and a Childline survey found that a shocking 60 per cent of 13-18 year olds have been asked to share a sexual image or video of themselves.

The Center for Medical Progress has released an undercover video in which executives at the highest levels of Planned Parenthood are implicated in the sale of aborted babies' body parts for medical experimentation – a practice that is illegal. It’s a federal felony, and a conviction can be punished by up to 10 years in prison and $500,000 in fines.

David Daleiden of the Center for Medical Progress leveled the accusions in the wake of a 30-month-long investigation into Planned Parenthood. "Planned Parenthood's criminal conspiracy to make money off of aborted baby parts reaches to the very highest levels of their organization," he said.

In the video, a woman identified as Planned Parenthood's senior medical services director, during a meeting with undercover investigators posing as buyers from a human biologics company, describes the use of partial-birth abortion to obtain undamaged fetal organs. Planned Parenthood's national president, Cecile Richards, is also seen in the video, praising this horrific practice.

Planned Parenthood is the leading abortion business in the United States. While national abortion numbers have gone down in recent years, Planned Parenthood's share of the total abortion market has continued to increase. Their most recent annual report documents 327,653 abortions at Planned Parenthood in the last reported year – at least 30% of the US total – while the organization raked in 528 million taxpayer dollars. Now it stands accused of tearing apart aborted babies and selling off their body parts for even more cash.

He enumerated the objectives as Iran's ability to go ahead with its nuclear activities, lifting of "cruel and inhumane sanctions," annulment of all "illegal" sanctions adopted by the UN Security Council against Iran and the withdrawal of Iran's nuclear dossier from the Security Council. Rouhani said the sanctions regime imposed on the Islamic Republic was never successful, adding that the bans only targeted the Iranian nation. He said the nuclear case had played into the hands of those involved in an Iranophobia campaign.

The Iranian president added that resistance of the Iranian nation guaranteed their victory in the nuclear talks. "Today, we are at an important juncture in the history of our country and our [Islamic] Revolution and the situation in the region," Rouhani said. He said some powers had had some illusions over the past 12 years regarding Iran, but "a new page has been turned and a new chapter has begun."

"Iran will honor the agreement, if the other side abides by it," the Iranian president said, adding that the Iranian nation always keeps its promises. Rouhani said the Tuesday statement benefits not only Iran and the Iranian people, but all the resistant nations in the region. Israel’s efforts to push the nuclear talks of the past nearly two years into failure have led to the defeat of the Tel Aviv regime, the Iranian president stated.

The 1990s were an important period in modern European history, when political leaders who had experienced at least one of the world wars initiated by Germany, sought to establish a peaceful and unified Europe. Their desire was to create a European Germany, not a German Europe, as it was stated in 1953 by the German writer Thomas Mann.

Politico’s author Gustavo Cardoso wrote in his article that European countries are now taking apart Greece’s financial difficulties and mistakes, but failed to prevent Germany from using its power, which makes Europe too German and Germany less European. According to him, Germany’s hegemony is one of the main factors of the current crisis in Greece and in the EU as a whole. Germany has been imposing its preferences on the rest of Europe. However, instead of bringing stability, the German approach has contributed to the crisis and created an essentially unstable situation.

In his article, Cardoso cited Hans Kundnani, author of the book “The Paradox of German Power”. According to Kundnani, events which have taken place since the beginning of the euro crisis in 2010, to a large extent can be explained by the transformation of national identity and the German economy, which occurred during the two decades between the reunification of the GDR and FRG and the euro crisis itself.

“In other words, Germany today, as in the period 1871-1945, is strong enough to try to impose its will, but at the same time is not strong enough to do it,” Cardoso wrote, referring to Kundnani.

But if history is a useful guide, then the US may already be due another recession. The average post-war growth streak has lasted less than five years. And the Bank for International Settlements, the so-called central bank of central banks, has warned that policymakers may not have room to fight the next financial crisis. So are economists being too complacent? Do they risk ignoring some major warning signs about the global economy's health?

While stocks and shares may not tell us much about the real economy, the transport industry supposedly does just that. And while equities are doing well, David Woo, a strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said: "The transportation market does not share this optimism." Shipping freight rates are down 40 percent so far this year, and "are showing no signs of recovery", according to Mr Woo. And BoAML's latest trucking survey shows "sentiment at the year-low" while rail traffic "remains very weak".

In the intervening period, the US's Federal Reserve has been unable to raise its interest rates. When it eventually does - and current thinking is that this will finally happen by the end of the year - economies could be in for a shock. The Fed's first attempts to tighten up policy, turning off QE, caused a taper tantrum across emerging markets in 2013. There's a real risk that a misstep on rates could lead to a second round of pain for those same economies.

The upshot is that all asset markets face a challenge ahead. Provided that they do not run ahead of themselves, and that policy-makers only raise rates in response to genuine and reliable signs of fundamental improvement in the economy, then there should not be a powerful shock – let alone a crash.

But investors should beware; we have lived through a period when, because of economic and financial policy, asset markets did not perform as badly as economic circumstances would have suggested. They now need to be prepared for the possibility that, as economic circumstances improve, the performance of asset prices will disappoint.

You see, the truth is that Greece desperately wants to stay in the euro, but Germany (and allies such as Finland) wants Greece out. Since Germany can’t simply order Greece to leave the euro, they need some sort of legal framework which will make it possible, and that is what this new “deal” provides. There are all kinds of conditions that must be satisfied and hurdles that must be crossed before Greece ever sees a single penny. If there is a single hiccup along the way, and this is what the Germans are counting on, Greece will be ejected from the eurozone.

For the moment, Greece has supposedly been “saved”. But anyone that believes that this crisis is “over” is just being delusional. The Germans and their allies have successfully lured the Greek government into a trap. Thanks to Tsipras, they have been handed a legal framework for getting rid of Greece. All they have to do now is wait for just the right moment to spring the trap, and it might just happen a lot sooner than a lot of people may think.

Many Greeks were also withdrawing their cash because they fear the country might be forced back onto the drachma. However a little known fact is that, Greeks who had prepared for bank runs by withdrawing cash and buying gold and silver bullion and then lodging that bullion and indeed cash into safety deposit boxes have also been caught up in the draconian capital controls.

We have warned about this for many years and warned as recently as April this year that people should avoid using safety deposit boxes in banks. “Greeks cannot withdraw cash left in safe deposit boxes at Greek banks as long as capital restrictions remain in place”, Nadia Valavani, a Deputy Finance Minister in Greece told local television station according to a Reuters report.

The report was little noticed as it was published on the less trafficked ‘Bonds’ section of Reuters.com on Sunday July 5th at 1:58 pm EDT or 6:58 pm GMT. Sunday afternoon and evening is a time when traders, investors and even eagle eyed news junkies are likely to be taking a well earned break. The notion that safe deposit boxes – facilities that are used by many precious metals investors and others seeking to safeguard their wealth and valuables – need to come under capital controls to protect against bank runs is a dubious one.

This cash is not in the banking system – its withdrawal would have no negative impact on the system. Its availability to its owner might bring cash into circulation which would benefit the wider community. The only reason to put access to safe deposit boxes under capital controls – measures which were agreed between the government and the banks – is because the banks and governments wish to retain the option of confiscating the contents of those boxes should the crisis deepen.

International inspectors will have the power to veto legislation. The radical-Left Syriza government will be forced to repeal a raft of laws passed since it took power in January, stripping away the last fig leaf of sovereignty. “It is unconditional surrender. We get serious austerity with no debt relief.

We will have foreign supervisors crawling over everything,” said Costas Lapavitsas, a Syriza MP and one of 40 or so rebels who plan to abstain or vote against the deal, mostly from the Left Platform. “They are telling us that from now on, they are going to govern the country. I am afraid there is going to be a real fight about this. There is a groundswell of anger and it is now perfectly clear to a lot of people that the only way out of neo-colonial servitude is to break free of monetary union,” he said.

Raising a perfect red heifer in accordance with the Biblical commandment requires advance planning, preparation and constant supervision according to Rabbi Richman. In order for a red heifer to be considered kosher for Biblical use, it must literally be raised from birth under specific conditions and in a controlled environment, which has never been attempted in Israel during modern times.

“Three decades of research and preparation have led us to this special day. During this period known as the ‘Three Weeks,’ as world Jewry mourns the destruction of the Second Holy Temple, the Temple Institute has taken a bold move towards the third. Having already prepared over 70 sacred vessels including the golden menorah and High Priest’s gemstone-encrusted breastplate, now is the time to fulfill the commandment of the Red Heifer,” said Rabbi Richman.

According to Jewish tradition, a red heifer is a female cow that is three years of age with a particular reddish hue and cannot have even two hairs of any other color. It cannot be used for any type of labor and must be blemish free. The biblical commandment regarding the red heifer can be found in the Book of Numbers [chapter 19] and is considered as the only antidote to the state of impurity brought on by death.

The key event was the Greek referendum on the European Union's demand for further austerity in exchange for infusions of cash to save the Greek banking system. The Syriza party had called the vote to strengthen its hand in dealing with the European demands. The Greek government's view was that the European terms would save Greece from immediate disaster but at the cost of impoverishing the country in the long term. The austerity measures demanded would, in their view, make any sort of recovery impossible. Facing a choice between a short-term catastrophe in the banking system and long-term misery, the Greeks saw themselves in an impossible position.

The European Union is founded on the dual principles of an irrevocable community of nations that have joined together but have retained their national sovereignty. The specifics are less important than the fact that Greece invoked its sovereign right, and Germany responded by enforcing an agreement that compelled the Greeks to cede those rights.

There were two sides of the Greek position that frightened the Germans. The first was that Athens was trying to use its national sovereignty to compel the European Union to allow Greece to avoid the pain of austerity. This would, in effect, shift the burden of the Greek debt from the Greeks to the European Union, which meant Germany. On the other hand, if the Greeks left the European Union, it would have created a precedent that would in the end shatter the bloc. If the European Union was an elective affinity, in Goethe's words, something you could enter and then leave, then the long-term viability of the bloc was in serious doubt. And there was no reason those doubts couldn't be extended to the free trade zone.

And with this, the Germans did something they never wanted to do: resurrect fairly unambiguously the idea that Germany is the sovereign and dominant nation-state in Europe, and that it has the power and the will to unilaterally impose its will on another nation. Certainly the niceties of votes by finance ministers and prime ministers were adhered to, but it was the Germans who conducted the real negotiations and who imposed their will on Greece.

This is not over, of course. It is now up to the Greek government to implement its agreements, and it does so in the face of the Greek referendum. The situation in Greece is desperate because of the condition of the banking system. It was the pressure point that the Germans used to force Greek capitulation. But Greece is now facing not only austerity, but also foreign governance. The Germans' position is they do not trust the Greeks. They do not mean the government now, but the Greek electorate. Therefore, they want monitoring and controls. This is reasonable from the German point of view, but it will be explosive to the Greeks.

The point of the matter is not going away, and not only because the Greek response is unpredictable; poverty versus sovereignty is a heady issue, especially when the Greeks will both remain poor and lose some sovereignty. The Germans made an example of Cyprus and now Greece. The leading power of Europe will not underwrite defaulting debtors. It will demand political submission for what help is given. This is not a message that will be lost in Europe, whatever the anti-Greek feeling is now.

Let's get things started with this paragraph from the German memo of things Greece should do (emphasis added):

“…adopt more ambitious product market reforms with a clear timetable for implementation of all OECD toolkit-I recommendations, including Sunday trade, sales periods, pharmacy ownership, milk, bakeries, [over the counter pharmaceutical products is a next step], as well as for the opening of macro-critical closed professions (eg ferry transportation). On the follow-up of the OECD toolkit-II, manufacturing needs to be included in the prior action;”

This is a brief, poorly written reference to a long series of policy recommendations you can read in this audit of Greek economic policy undertaken by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The Sunday provision is very simple and easy to understand — Germany thinks Greece should change its law so stores can open on Sundays on the same terms as they open on any other day.

What the German government is asking the Greek government to do about this is something that Germany rather infamously declines to do itself. In other words, they think the eurozone would be better off without Greece but they don't want to come out and say so. So they're piling on demands and hoping Greece turns them down. Germany, Europe’s largest economy, is at odds with a trend across the region in recent years to liberalize labor laws that previously kept stores closed on Sundays. As a result, the country’s bricks-and-mortar shops risk missing out on sales as they face stiffer competition from Internet retailers.

Two weeks ago, Germany’s top administrative court stopped the state of Hesse - home to the country’s financial capital of Frankfurt - from letting libraries, video stores and lottery sellers operate on Sundays, ruling it was protecting the right of workers to have the day off. It's simply not credible to believe that this is a genuine sticking point for the Germans. They are looking for reasons to keep disagreeing.

The terms are harsher by a full order of magnitude than those rejected by Greek voters in a landslide referendum a week ago, and therefore can never command democratic assent. They must be carried through by a Greek parliament still dominated by MPs from Left and Right who loathe every line of the summit statement, the infamous SN 4070/15, and have only agreed – if they have agreed – with a knife to their throats.

EMU inspectors can veto legislation. The emasculation of the Greek parliament has been slipped into the text. All that is missing is a unit of EMU gendarmes. Such terms are unenforceable. The creditors have sought to nail down the new memorandum by transferring €50 billion of Greek assets to “an independent fund that will monetise the assets through privatisations and other means”. It will be used in part to pay off debts. This fund will be under EU "supervision". The cosmetic niceties of sovereignty will be preserved by letting the Greek authorities manage its day to day affairs. Nobody is fooled.

Nobel economist Paul Krugman says the EMU demands are “madness” on every level. “What we’ve learned these past couple of weeks is that being a member of the eurozone means that the creditors can destroy your economy if you step out of line. This has no bearing at all on the underlying economics of austerity,” he said. “This goes beyond harsh into pure vindictiveness, complete destruction of national sovereignty, and no hope of relief. It is, presumably, meant to be an offer Greece can’t accept; but even so, it’s a grotesque betrayal of everything the European project was supposed to stand for,” he said. Yes, Syriza has blinked, though there are many chapters in this sorry saga yet to come.

I will return to the behaviour of Germany and the diplomatic disaster that has unfolded over the last few days. For now let me just quote the verdict of historian Simon Schama. “If Tsipras was wearing the crown of King Pyrrhus this time last week, Merkel is wearing it now. Her ultimatum is the beginning of the end of the EU,” he said.

Exactly.

Negotiations between Iran and six world powers - the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany - began in 2006. The so-called P5+1 want Iran to scale back its sensitive nuclear activities to ensure that it cannot build a nuclear weapon. Iran, which wants crippling international sanctions lifted, has always insisted that its nuclear work is peaceful.

There has been stiff resistance to a deal from conservatives both in Iran and the US. The US Congress has 60 days in which to consider the deal, though Mr Obama said he would veto any attempt to block it. The Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives, John Boehner, said the deal would only "embolden" Tehran. "Instead of stopping the spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, this deal is likely to fuel a nuclear arms race around the world," he added. Israel's government has also warned against an agreement.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was a "stunning historic mistake" that would provide Iran with "hundreds of billions of dollars with which it can fuel its terror machine and its expansion and aggression throughout the Middle East and across the globe". He said he did not regard Israel as being bound by this agreement. "We will always defend ourselves," he added.

World powers have "gambled that in 10 years time Iran's terrorist regime will change - while removing any initiative for it to do so! In fact the deal gives Iran every incentive not to change," he lamented. Netanyahu fired that the deal will fuel "Iran's sponsorship of terror and attempts to destroy Israel," citing as proof statements to that effect made by Iranian officials and allies including Hezbollah.

“This deal repeats the mistakes made with North Korea," he intoned. "There, too, we were assured that inspections and verifications would prevent a rogue regime from developing nuclear weapons. And we all know how that ended. The bottom line of this very bad deal is exactly what Iran's President Rouhani said today: the international community is removing the sanctions, and Iran is keeping its nuclear program.”

"The deal will give an unreformed, unrepentant and far richer terrorist regime the capacity to produce many nuclear bombs - in fact, an entire nuclear arsenal, with the means to deliver it. What a stunning historic mistake. Israel is not bound by this deal with Iran, because Iran continues to seek our destruction," he warned. "We will always defend ourselves."

Just a day earlier on Monday, the prime minister declared that Israel will block Iran's path to the nuclear bomb regardless of the deal, saying, "our commitment is to prevent Iran from arming itself with nuclear weapons."