"I don't think Iran has any intention of giving up its efforts to get deliverable nuclear weapons," said the former ambassador. "Even if a deal is signed sometime in the summer I think the ayatollahs will violate it even before the ink is dry." Lending credence to those suspicions, top Iranian officials have said they will start using advanced IR-8 centrifuges that are 20 times as effective as standard ones as soon as a deal is reached, even as the US asserts a deal will limit the usage of advanced centrifuges.

According to Bolton, the West doesn't have enough knowledge about Iran's covert nuclear program, nor does it possess any sufficient mechanism to monitor possible violations of a future deal, meaning such a deal will only "legitimize Iran's path to nuclear weapons."

So why is US President Barack Obama so earnestly pressing for a deal with Iran?

However, the number is estimated to be only ten per cent of the true number of teens struck down with severe side effects after taking the vaccine. The jab has been routinely administered to 12-year-old and 13-year-old girls in Britain since 2008. The injection blocks the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus which leads to most cervical cancer cases.

Otherwise healthy school-aged girls have reportedly suffered chest and abdominal pains, exhaustion, breathing difficulties, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, which triggers an abnormally high heart rate, and fibromyalgia, which causes chronic pain throughout the body. In more than a quarter of the cases, the effects have apparently been so severe that they were considered 'life-threatening' and required immediate medical treatment.

In the 1980s, western countries - in collaboration with Saudi Arabia - had supported jihadists associated with Osama bin Laden, to defeat Soviet military forces in Afghanistan. Since at least ten years, they have been supporting Arab jihadists in an effort to weaken Iran's main allies. These activities, accompanying the official "war on terror," are "a very high-risk venture,” warn US intelligence officials. Saudi Arabia, one of Germany's main allies in the Arab world, is playing a central role in supporting jihadists.

The policeman – whom Temple activists identified as a Druze – told the Jewish man that he may not drink water. "Naturally, it is a hot day today, I went to get a drink,” the man, Elishama Sandman, told Ynet. “When I came close to the faucets, the policeman stopped me and told me that I do not have permission to drink.” Sandman asked him if this was a new instruction and the policeman answered in the affirmative.

“Saying to people who are already cooking in the sun for two or three hours that they can't drink water is saying one of two things,” Richman told Arutz Sheva Monday. “Either that they should die in the heat, or that they can't go up to the Temple Mount.”

Now, nearly a quarter of a century after the US Navy had to give up its Subic Bay base and the Clark Air Base across the Zambales mountains to the east, Americans are once again ready to defend the Philippines, and the region. The Philippines Senate, which had voted in 1991 against renewing the lease on US bases, has dropped its objection to the American return to waters threatened by China’s new insistence on its right to rule almost all the South China Sea – including the Spratly Islands claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei.

The increasingly acrimonious relations between Beijing and Washington over the vast area of ocean indicate a rising role for the US – in defence of not only the Philippines’ stake in the waters but also of Vietnam, where 40 years ago the US was ousted in a war for which Subic Bay provided strategic support.

On Monday, fresh from proclaiming the right of US ships and planes to move unmolested in waters and airspace claimed by China, the US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter was in Hanoi, listening to a Vietnamese band play “The Star Spangled Banner” and declaring: “We’re both committed to deepening our defence relationship.”

Although open warfare does not seem imminent, the prospect of the US returning in force to Subic Bay, once America’s largest overseas naval base, has increased tensions. The Shiloh, one of the most advanced US cruisers, armed with guided missiles and cannon, is expected to ply the South China Sea after taking on fuel and supplies. Other vessels, including at least one destroyer, are likely to join it in a mini-flotilla, posing an immediate challenge as China builds airstrips and other facilities on 2,000 acres of land reclaimed in the past 18 months.

The problem for the US and the rest of the industrialised world is that the Middle East controls 60 percent of proven oil reserves and with it the keys to the global economy. Should ISIL capture a major oil field in Iraq, or overwhelm the government, the consequences for energy markets and the financial system would be potentially catastrophic.

According to Daniel Yergin, the energy expert and vice-chairman of IHS, the business information provider, the biggest threat to oil prices is the political chaos that threatens to engulf the Middle East, combined with the West’s reluctance to intervene.

Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Yergin argued that the price of a barrel of oil could skyrocket to levels above $100 per barrel if ISIL is allowed to press deeper into Iraq, the second-largest producer in the cartel after Saudi Arabia. “ISIL presents a whole new reality for the region, which just isn’t reflected in the oil market at the moment,” said Mr Yergin. “It’s an increasingly grave situation for most of OPEC and the Middle East. At some point the security issues will start to come back into the price of oil.”

Europe's shadow banking nexus has grown by leaps and bounds since the Lehman crisis and has begun to generate a whole new set of dangers, many of them beyond the oversight of regulators. While tougher rules have forced the banks to retrench, shadow banking has picked up the baton. Hedge funds have ballooned by 150 percent since early 2008.

Investment funds have grown by 120 percent to €9.4 trillion with a pervasive “liquidity mismatch”, investing in sticky assets across the globe while allowing clients to withdraw their money at short notice. This is a recipe for trouble in bouts of stress. “Large-scale outflows cannot be ruled out,” it said. The ECB warned that a rush for crowded exits could set off a wave of forced selling and quickly spin out of control.

Reports Thursday said that at least three North Korean delegations traveled to Iran in late April to help advance the country’s nuclear weapons program. The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) released additional information claiming that the North Koreans primarily worked with an Iranian agency tasked with “manufacturing interior parts of nuclear warhead.”

The NCRI’s claims sparked questions from reporters during the State Department’s daily briefing and forced the Obama administration to reveal it is looking into the reports. Some have taken the NCRI claims as further proof of the extensive coordination between Tehran and Pyongyang on the nuclear front. In March, Iran was accused of housing illicit nuclear materials in North Korea to avoid detection by international inspectors.

The NCRI initially disclosed Thursday that based on sources inside Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), a seven-person delegation of North Korean defense ministry officials travelled to Iran at the end of April. “The delegates included nuclear experts, nuclear warhead experts, and experts in various elements of ballistic missiles including guidance systems,” the NCRI said, according to Reuters.

And now, we get this from Reuters:

"Cash-strapped Greece has racked up mounting debts with international drugmakers and now owes the industry more than 1.1 billion Euros ($1.2 billion), a leading industry official said on Wednesday. The rising unpaid bill reflects the growing struggle by the nearly bankrupt country to muster cash, and creates a dilemma for companies under moral pressure not to cut off supplies of life-saving medicines. Richard Bergstrom, director general of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, told Reuters his members had not been paid by Greece since December 2014. They are owed money by both hospitals and state-run health insurer EOPYY."

At the recent National Defense Industrial Association Conference, Defense One reporters saw the Hornet in flight and checked out its surprisingly clear video feed. It’s launched from a small box that straps to a utility belt, which is also where the data is stored, as opposed to on the drone itself, in case it’s captured. The video feeds directly to a small, chest-mounted screen. The operator steers it forward, backward, up and down with a videogame-like one-handed controller, or sets waypoints to allow the drone to fly itself.

The PD-100 has been in operational use for three years, including wide use by British Brigade Reconnaissance Force in Afghanistan. “This is what they use when they check out enemy compounds,” said Arne Skjaerpe, CEO and president of Proxdynamics USA.

It’s the smallest flying robot ever used in a combat setting, says Skjaerpe, who isn’t fond of the term “drone.” He prefers the term “sensor,” more and more of which are making their way onto the bodies of dismounted soldiers. At around $40,000 a system, the Hornet is an expensive sensor. But as drones go, it’s a bargain.

Many agree with him. Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, sums up the need to devolve power away from Brussels thus: "European where necessary; national where possible."

Last week, Dara Murphy, our Minister for European Affairs, said: "Much of what's being suggested and proposed to date by David Cameron would be to the advantage of all of the people of the European Union, particularly in the space of regulation and growth, so we are very optimistic that the UK will remain, as it should be, at the very very heart of decision-making in Europe."

"The wind in Greece, the wind in Spain, the wind in Poland… blows in opposite directions, but all these winds say that Europe must change."