USA - A decade ago, exposure of President George W Bush’s Total Information Awareness scheme brought assurances that it had been shelved, but its Orwellian intent was only shifted to the NSA and it now gives the US government nearly god-like powers, says Norman Solomon. As a matter of faith, some people believe that God can see and hear everything. But as a matter of fact, the US government now has the kind of surveillance powers formerly attributed only to a supreme being.

ISRAEL - A five-hour humanitarian ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas has begun in the Gaza Strip after nine days of fighting. Correspondents say people are queuing outside banks and traffic is building up as they rush to get supplies. Fighting continued until the truce came into effect at 10:00 local time (07:00 GMT). Officials in Gaza say Israeli raids have left 227 Palestinians dead. Hamas rocket attacks have killed one Israeli. Israel launched its military operation on 8 July with the stated objective of halting Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel. However, the United Nations says most of those killed in Gaza have been civilians. Israel accuses Hamas of hiding its military infrastructure within the civilian population. A senior Israeli security official told the BBC the military would "respond and intercept immediately" if attacked during the ceasefire.

USA - The California state Senate sees their share of interesting and controversial legislation proposals. One of the most recent bills, Assembly Bill No. 1014, is one which, if passed, would permit the secret seizure of a California state resident’s guns, after just one complaint that they pose a risk of committing an act of violence. California Assembly members Das Williams, a Democrat from Carpinteria, and Nancy Skinner, a Democrat from Berkeley, first introduced the legislation last year. Favor of the bill increased after the Island Vista shooting rampage on May 23, when the shooter’s mother claimed she had raised concerns about her son’s mental state, but no action had been taken. Even if no crime had been committed, the bill states that it would permit a court to issue an “ex parte gun violence restraining order,” along with a firearm seizure warrant based solely on the “reckless use, display, or brandishing” of firearms, or on the “recent acquisition of firearms or other deadly weapons.“

GERMANY - Its football team brushes aside all opposition to win the World Cup. Its Chancellor Angela Merkel dominates the European continent. Its mighty export machine keeps its factories humming, racking up big trade surpluses, and laying the foundations for what many people regard as the world’s most successful economy. There is not much wrong with Germany right now — and plenty that is right.

JAPAN - The research was carried out by scientists at the Institute of Earth Sciences in Grenoble, France and the Institute of Global Physics in Paris, working in collaboration with Japanese scientists. On 22 June 2014 Mount Fuji was added to the World Heritage List as a Cultural Site, one of Japan’s ‘Three Holy Mountains’. For the first time they observed the response of Japanese volcanoes to seismic waves produced by the Tohoko earthquake of 2011. Their conclusions, published in Science, reveal how earthquakes can impact volcanoes and should help to assess the risk of massive volcanic eruptions worldwide. 'Our work does not say that the volcano will start erupting, but it does show that it's in a critical state,' Dr Florent Brenguier, lead author of the publication, told The Guardian.

USA - China became the largest international buyer of US homes (in dollar value) last year, according to a report from NAR, taking over from Canada. In terms of volume of transactions, Canadians still represented the largest foreign buyers. Over the 12 months ended March 2014, Chinese buyers bought about $22 billion worth of properties in the US, accounting for about 25% of total international sales. What's more, 76% of sales were all-cash purchases, while 24% required mortgage financing. But what exactly were Chinese buyers looking for and where were they looking? California, Washington, and New York were the biggest markets for Chinese buyers. The median price of homes they purchases was $523,148.

USA - It’s cost $40 billion so far to clean up America’s biggest nuclear waste site — half the size of Rhode Island — and it’s going to take another 40 years and $100 billion to finish the job. In the meantime, workers from the Hanford nuclear site in Washington State are still getting sick from exposure to any one of 1,400 chemicals identified there, while allegations of mismanagement, negligence and secrecy over what may be life-threatening risks persist. And delays keep piling up even though at least a third of the aging tanks storing 56 million gallons of radioactive waste have leaked or are leaking, pouring some of the world’s most dangerous contaminants into the Columbia River.

USA - From our fields to our forks, huge corporations have an overwhelming amount of power over our food supply every step of the way. Right now there are more than 313 million people living in the United States, and the job of feeding all of those people is almost entirely in the hands of just a few dozen monolithic companies. If you do not like how our food is produced or you don't believe that it is healthy enough, it isn't very hard to figure out who is to blame. These mammoth corporations are not in business to look out for the best interests of the American people. Rather, the purpose of these corporations is to maximize wealth for their shareholders.

UK - The "worried well" are contributing to a boom in celebrity-inspired "free from" foods, as analysis shows half of shoppers now buy produce without gluten, wheat or lactose. Just one per cent of the UK population has been diagnosed with coeliac disease, an autoimmune condition that requires sufferers to avoid all gluten, and an estimated 15 per cent are lactose intolerant. However, the market for "free from" foods has doubled in the past five years as an increasing number of people cut out foods from their diet as part of a "lifestyle choice". Tesco buyer Lauren Tredgett told the magazine that "the massive growth in demand is being driven by an increase in customers becoming more aware of their intolerance to wheat and gluten".

GERMANY - Amid the worsening Berlin-Washington spy row, German politicians are considering going back to old-fashioned manual typewriters for confidential documents to protect national secrets from American NSA spooks. Patrick Sensburg, the chair of the German parliament’s enquiry into NSA alleged spying, said committee members are considering new security measures and are seriously thinking about abandoning email and returning to old school typewriters. “As a matter of fact, we already have [a typewriter], and it’s even a non-electronic typewriter,” he told the ARD Morning Show Monday.

MIDDLE EAST - Radical Islamic cleric Abu Qatada, who is being tried on terror charges in Jordan, on Tuesday denounced as "void" the declaration of a caliphate by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). "The announcement of a caliphate by the Islamic State is void and meaningless because it was not approved by jihadists in other parts of the world," Abu Qatada was quoted by AFP as having written in a 21-page document published on jihadist websites. ISIS, which has been fighting in neighboring Syria and Iraq, on June 29 proclaimed a "caliphate" straddling both countries and headed by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who now calls himself Caliph Ibrahim. It is now calling itself Islamic State instead of using the full ISIS name.

UK - The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have signalled they are glad the previous attempts to ordain women bishops collapsed because the new arrangements are more likely to hold the Church together. The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, disclosed that he was “not disappointed” when previous legislation failed to pass the General Synod less than two years ago, despite the fact that it threw the church into its biggest crisis of recent times. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, said the new deal which relies on trust rather than detailed rules was “much more Christ-like” than what was on the table before. Members of the ruling General Synod gave overwhelming backing to a plan to ordain women as bishops as early as the end of this year, in a historic vote in York on Monday.

USA - White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Monday the Obama administration’s foreign policies in a number of areas have enhanced the world’s “tranquility” – a word that raised eyebrows as reporters pointed to situations in Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Ukraine and the South China Sea. More than one reporter during Monday’s press briefing referred to a front-page Wall Street Journal article highlighting some of those crises, and citing security strategists as saying “the breadth of global instability now unfolding hasn’t been seen since the late 1970s.” ABC News’ Jon Karl… pointed to “what’s looking like an all-out war” between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, Sunni jihadist successes in “taking over vast territory in Iraq and in Syria,” Russian aggression in Ukraine, and concerns about Chinese handling of territorial disputes in the South China Sea. “It doesn’t seem like a time to be touting tranquility on the international scene,” he told Earnest.

USA - Americans should be worried. The US military has grounded all its new F-35 Joint Strike Fighters following an incident on June 23, when one of the high-tech warplanes caught fire on the runway of a Florida air base. The no-fly order — which affects at least 50 F-35s at training and test bases in Florida, Arizona, California and Maryland — began on the evening of July 3 and continued through July 11. All those F-35s sitting idle could be a preview of a future in which potentially thousands of the Pentagon’s warplanes can’t reliably fly.

USA - Residents of California can now face fines of up to $500 (£300) a day for watering their lawns as the state takes unprecedented action to combat the worst drought in recent history. In one of the most drastic responses yet to tackling the problem, state regulators on Tuesday voted to approve hefty penalties for people who waste water on non-essential uses, such as watering lawns, using sprinklers and washing cars. Last month nearly 80 per cent of the Golden State was considered to be under "extreme" and "exceptional" drought conditions, the highest categories.