The political left is hoping for a document that ties belief in global warming to a religious obligation. Climate skeptics have already started criticizing the document. The choice of Professor John Schnellnhuber, founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, as one of three presenters may be giving the left added hope and giving skeptics severe heartburn. He has been described as one of the more aggressive scientists on the question of man-made global warming.

In a talk given to what’s described as the “failed” 2009 Copenhagen climate conference, reported in the New York Times, Schnellnhuber, who has advised German President Angela Merkel and is a visiting professor at Oxford, said of global warming: “In a very cynical way, it’s a triumph for science because at last we have stabilized something - namely the estimates for the carrying capacity of the planet, namely below 1 billion people.”

Schnellnhuber is also author of what’s called the “two-degree target” that says governments must not allow the temperature to rise more than 2 degrees higher than at the start of the industrial revolution. Any higher, the theory holds, and much life on earth would either perish or be gravely harmed.

To deal with climate issues, he has also called for an “Earth Constitution that would transcend the UN Charter” along with the creation of a “Global Council… elected by all the people on Earth” and a “Planetary Court… a transnational legal body open to appeals from everybody, especially with respect to violations of the Earth Constitution.”

In 1986, Monckton was among the first to advise the prime minister that “global warming” caused by carbon dioxide should be investigated. Monckton has since become a vocal advocate that global warming — subsequently called climate change, most recently camouflaged by the term “sustainable development,” doesn’t exist.

Monckton believes the Obama administration is spending vast amounts of money on “trashing their own economy by driving every steelworks and aluminum works overseas, by not allowing the development of the XL pipeline, interfering with fracking, and establishing a war on coal.” He contends that all of this has had “catastrophic effects on the jobs of the very people that will be foolishly voting for Hillary Clinton in 2016.” Bannon asked Monckton why does he believe Pope Francis is getting involved in the climate change movement, which he is about to justify in a Vatican encyclical this week.

Monckton explained that if one looks at the book of Genesis (“with dominion over the earth comes responsibility”) and heroes of the church like St Francis of Assisi, taking care of the earth has always been “part of established Catholic social teachings. Nothing new in any of that. But what happened was a communist managed to get control of the pontifical academies of sciences and social sciences — Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo.”

According to Monckton, Sorondo is an “out and out marxist who decided that climate change was useful to marxism.” Monckton said that Sorondo could care less whether climate change is true or not. He ignored information from the Vatican’s most influential scientists demonstrating that global warming was more theoretical than empirical. Francis, who was brought up in the Communist tradition of liberation theology in Latin America, encourages Sorondo.

Monckton further explained that Francis is influenced by extremist Professor John Schnellnhuber, founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who said in 2009 at a climate conference in Copenhagen that if we let global warming continue, six billion of the seven billion people on earth will be killed by it. Monckton said that Schnellnhuber will be standing by the side of Pope Francis when they announce the encyclical next week. “The fact that Schnellnhuber is going to be there is an extremely bad sign,” he declared.

The influence that Schnellnhuber may have had over the papal letter worries Monckton. The fact that he will be there next to the pope suggests to Monckton that Francis is thanking him for having written the climate portion of the encyclical.

The segment included supposedly prophetic videos, such as a teenager declaring, "It's June 8th, 2015. One carton of milk is $12.99" (on the actual June 8, 2015, a gallon of milk cost, on average, $3.39). Another clip featured this prediction for the current year: "Gas reached over $9 a gallon" (in reality, gas costs an average of $2.75).

Ultimately, ABC delayed the air-date for Earth 2100 and the one-hour show didn't debut until June 2, 2009. The program showcased the terrible impact of global warming from 2015 through 2100. In the special, a "storm of the century" wiped out Miami. Other highlights included a destroyed New York City and an abandoned Las Vegas. By 2084, Earth's population will apparently be just 2.7 billion.

The measure, meant to give assistance funds to re-train workers, has been supported by Democrats in the past, but only 40 Democrats voted in Obama’s favor. The “no” vote was cast with a strong push by the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, which claimed that bill would have hurt American workers. The president really went to the mat for this bill, too. On Wednesday, he made a rare trip to the House to impress upon Democrats how important his bill was to him. He essentially told his party that a vote against the bill was a vote against him.

But even after his personal plea, Democrat minority leader Representative Nancy Pelosi (Democrat for California) was unmoved, and immediately announced that she was prepared to vote “no” on the issue. She was joined by the bulk of her party in that vote. In fact, some Democrats weren’t willing to simply vote “no” and move on. Take Oregon Representative Peter DeFazio (Democrat), for instance. He took the opportunity to seriously criticize Obama.

“He’s ignored Congress and disrespected Congress for years, and then he shows up at the baseball game with homemade beer, and then comes to the caucus and lectures us for 40 minutes about his values and whether or not we’re being honest by using legislative tactics to try and stop something which we believe is a horrible mistake for the United States of America and questions our integrity,” the Democrat complained. “It wasn’t the greatest strategy.”

In light of how much importance Obama placed on passage of the bill coupled with his rare personal appeal, The Associated Press hinted that in these now waning months of his last term in the White House, this loss might signal the end of his political power within his own party. At the very least, it was plain that few Democrats seemed to fear voting against the president’s interests. Many didn’t even pause, leaving little doubt that they would vote against Obama’s trade interests.

The parade, boasting trucks bearing DJs, dancers and drag performers, began at 11 am local time as participants gathered at the city’s Meir Park. At noon, marchers began walking down some of the city’s busiest thoroughfares, ending at Charles Clore Park on the Mediterranean beach. Some one-sixth of the estimated 180,000 participants, or 30,000 people, are tourists, many of whom came to Israel to participate in the march, according to officials.

The event has become one of Tel Aviv’s most popular annual festivals. Streets and stores have been decorated with rainbow flags for days. Thousands of Israelis flocked to the city center to observe the parade, filling cafes and restaurants along the route to capacity.

“Welcome to all our guests from abroad to the gay-friendliest city in the world,” Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai declared at the event’s launch Friday morning. “We’ve been through a lot,” he added. “In 17 years, we’ve achieved a different reality in this city, and also in Israel. I want to tell all the politicians, there is still a great deal of legislation that has to be passed to accept the gay community. We will continue to walk this path, and to support the pride parade.”

A panel discussion featured a gay Marine officer, a gay Army sergeant who is a criminal investigator, a lesbian chaplain and a transgender woman, Amanda Simpson, who is executive director of the Army’s Office of Energy Initiatives. She is the first openly transgender political appointee in any presidential administration. She was chosen for the civilian post, she said, because she was “the best person to do the job.”

All four introduced their wives, husbands, and, in one case, a fiancé before a filled auditorium.

For LeGendre, the decision was a no-brainer: “I wanted minimally invasive prenatal care and a completely natural childbirth experience,” she explains. She’d known several women who had positive birth experiences with midwives; meanwhile, some mothers who had gone the traditional physician route told her they had been urged to accept interventions that LeGendre didn’t want, like genetic testing, early induction of labor, or IV antibiotics during labor.

LeGendre is part of a small but growing minority of American mothers opting for midwives over obstetricians: In 1989, the first year for which data is available, midwives were the lead care providers at just 3 percent of births in the US. In 2013, the most recent year for which statistics are available, that number was close to 9 percent.

The growing popularity of midwifery care is partially a response to rising Caesarean rates, says Eugene Declercq, a professor of community health sciences at Boston University who studies American maternity care. Currently, around a third of all births in the US are Cesarean sections, a number far higher than the World Health Organization-recommended target of 10 to 15 percent. The inflated rate is due in part to longstanding misperceptions in the US medical community about how quickly labor should progress and when medical intervention is necessary.

Greek stocks had climbed by more than 8 percent before the IMF statement was released. Gerry Rice, a spokesman for the IMF, said: "The ball is very much in Greece's court." The relief rally enjoyed by holders of Greek equities is now expected to dissolve on Friday morning. "There are major differences between us in most key areas," Mr Rice said, adding: "There has been no progress in narrowing these differences recently."

He said that he understood Greek authorities were preparing further proposals. Mr Tsipras said on Thursday: "We are working in order to bridge the main differences, especially the differences on fiscal and financial issues." The IMF said that the Greek pension system is "unsustainable", with state spending on pensions accounting for 10 percent of GDP, compared with 2.5 percent across the EU as a whole.

"The risk of insolvency is increasing by the day," said the head of the German Bundesbank Jens Weidmann. "The main losers in that scenario would be Greece and the Greek people." Add in the decision by the International Monetary Fund to withdraw its team from technical talks with Greek officials in Brussels, and fly them back to Washington, and the prospects look alarmingly gloomy. Sometimes the toughest talking happens just before a deal is done. But occasionally it means things are about to fall apart.

So the public pressure on Alexis Tsipras is growing - reflecting concern within the EU and the IMF that he has miscalculated the extent to which he can orchestrate a change in policy. But a brief visit to Athens this week was a reminder of the countervailing pressures the prime minister is under at home.

He was elected in January when his party, Syriza - the Coalition of the Radical Left - swept to power. Now his supporters expect him to deliver, and some are taking a hard line. Twenty-two Syriza MPs wrote a joint letter to Mr Tsipras on Tuesday urging him to implement election pledges as soon as possible to bring back collective bargaining and raise the minimum wage - reversing reforms pushed through over the last few years.

The chief executive, chairman, Luxembourg CEO and second largest shareholder of Kaupthing, an Icelandic bank that collapsed, were sentenced in February to between four and five years in prison for market manipulation. "Why should we have a part of our society that is not being policed or without responsibility?" said special prosecutor Olafur Hauksson at the time. "It is dangerous that someone is too big to investigate - it gives a sense there is a safe haven."

While the UK government nationalised Lloyds and RBS with tax-payers’ money and the US government bought stakes in its key banks, Iceland adopted a different approach. It said it would shore up domestic bank accounts. Everyone else was left to fight over the remaining cash. This year the International Monetary Fund declared that Iceland had achieved economic recovery 'without compromising its welfare model' of universal healthcare and education.

Other measures of progress like the country’s unemployment rate, compare just as well with countries like the US. Rather than maintaining the value of the krona artificially, Iceland chose to accept inflation.

The encyclical, a letter sent to bishops, due next Thursday would add a moral dimension to work on climate change for many believers, who would view it as a way to protect creation, she predicted. "I do think the encyclical is going to have a major impact," Figueres, the head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, said at the end of June 1-11 talks in Bonn, Germany, about a UN deal due to be agreed in Paris in December.

She said there was also a growing view among many governments, companies and investors that many actions to slow climate change would be economically profitable, rather than loss-making. Combining moral and economic arguments could help a shift from fossil fuels toward renewable energies. "I believe that the transformation is on its way, it is irreversible and it is only going to pick up speed," she said.

It is estimated to cost about four billion Euros, with another four billion having been already invested. With MEADS, Germany would achieve more "autonomy in security policy," according to a CSU party military policy specialist. The German Navy will also receive four MKS 180 multi-role warships worth around four billion Euros, better suited for waging distant wars more effectively and over more extended periods.

Other armament projects, such as a German-French battle tank, serve the consolidation of the EU's arms industries or - as with the "Euro-drone" - are aimed at achieving more independence from the US arms industry. The A400M Airbus airlifter crash in early May is seen by observers in the context of these efforts to achieve autonomy.

With its decision in favor of MEADS, Berlin is pursuing its efforts to strengthen the German-European arms industry in relationship to its US counterpart. A US company, Lockheed Martin, is involved in the project. Experts considered years ago that MEADS, the only large-scale transatlantic project, "offers German companies a rare opportunity … to benefit from the technology transfer with the USA in that domain."

In comparison to purchasing modernized US "Patriot" batteries, MEADS offers Berlin the chance to produce and further develop modern sensor technology in Germany. Last year, Defense Minister von der Leyen declared this to be the "key technology."

Addressing a Franco-British Council conference at Lancaster House in central London, Grieve told the audience of judges, diplomats and academics that: “Our [Conservative party] intent, if pursued, threatens to make the [European Convention on human rights] inoperable.” The Conservative MP says the government’s plan to leave Strasbourg court threatens to make the European convention on human rights inoperable

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “This government was elected with a mandate to reform and modernise the UK human rights framework. The UK has a proud tradition of respect for human rights which long predates the Human Rights Act 1998. But the Human Rights Act opened the system to abuse, damaging the credibility of human rights.

“That’s why we will bring forward proposals for a British bill of rights. Our bill will protect fundamental human rights, but also prevent their abuse and restore some common sense to the system. We will widely consult on our proposals before introducing legislation.”

If hypocrisy needed a poster child, the despotic and brutal regime of Saudi Arabia, which is currently bombing Yemenite civilians into oblivion and is advertising job openings for additional executioners (growth industry in Saudi Arabia), more than set the standard. Worse, a majority of the so called “civilized” nations of the world supported the resolution, showing that subservience to the power of oil trumps any semblance of integrity in the international community.

The Saudis can be dismissed. It is unnecessary to delineate their acts of brutality. These have long appeared before the world. The Saudis’ hypocrisy is a mainstay of their propaganda. If not for their oil, their anti-Israel vitriol would be disregarded, as one day the changing nature of the energy market will cause it to be. With the exception of naive, leftist college students who are taught that the UN is a citadel of virtue, no one will take a Saudi-sponsored resolution seriously.

The harm is not in the resolution. It is in its acceptance by the global community, and the message that the action sends to the Israelis. Further isolating the Israelis with resolutions forged in the cauldron of the absurd, and mixed with hypocrisy, will not pave the way for peace. The consequences will ultimately be indistinguishable from those of the second Palestinian intifada, which had disastrous results for the Israeli peace movement.