On the eve of this year's march, using numbers from the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), LifeNews.com reports that there have been over 56 million legal abortions in the United States since 1973.

Norma McCorvey, the original "Jane Roe" in the Roe vs Wade case now spends her time as a pro-life advocate. McCorvey says, “I think it’s safe to say that the entire abortion industry is based on a lie… I am dedicated to spending the rest of my life undoing the law that bears my name."

Lew warned in the new letter that Congress will likely need to raise the debt ceiling by late February to avoid a potential default on the country's obligations. As part of the bill to reopen the government in mid-October, the debt limit was suspended through February 7. The Treasury can use so-called "extraordinary measures" after that point to keep borrowing and paying the nation's bills for a few weeks thereafter.

"While this forecast is subject to inherent variability, we do not foresee any reasonable scenario in which the extraordinary measures would last for an extended period of time," Lew wrote in the letter, which was addressed to House Speaker John Boehner (Republican for Ohio), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Democrat for California), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Democrat for Nevada), and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Republican for Kentucky).

In the letter, Lew urged Congress to raise the debt ceiling before February 7, and "certainly before late February." "The Speaker has said that we should not default on our debt, or even get close to it, but a 'clean' debt limit increase simply won’t pass in the House," Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said. "We hope and expect the White House will work with us on a timely, fiscally-responsible solution."

Lew had said in a December letter to Congressional leaders that the deadline would be sometime in late February or early March. In the new letter, Lew wrote that a unique set of circumstances in February would only provide the Treasury with a few weeks of wiggle room through "extraordinary measures" after February 7.

They have recaptured virtually every part of the country that had been won by our valorous men and women. The cost? More than 4,000 Americans dead and more than 30,000 wounded. Plus billions of dollars - and all for what?

When it comes to the Arab world we simply do not know what we are doing and because of that everything we do is wrong. On TV yesterday one expert said we never should have gone into Iraq. He was right. The other expert said we never should have left Iraq. He was also right.

Because when it comes to the Arab world we are strangers in strange lands and we will always be strangers. There is nothing we can fix unless they fix it themselves. Will that day ever come? Be advised not to take such a bet… not in this lifetime. So Secretary of State John Kerry’s panic-stricken efforts to make peace between the Palestinian Arabs and the Jewish State amounts to this – futility and nonsense.

In a memo to clients provided to Secrets, David John Marotta calculates the actual unemployment rate of those not working at a sky-high 37.2 percent, not the 6.7 percent advertised by the Fed, and the Misery Index at over 14, not the 8 claimed by the government.

Marotta, who recently advised those worried about an imploding economy to get a gun, said that the government isn't being honest in how it calculates those out of the workforce or inflation, the two numbers used to get the Misery Index figure. “The unemployment rate only describes people who are currently working or looking for work,” he said. That leaves out a ton more. “Unemployment in its truest definition, meaning the portion of people who do not have any job, is 37.2 percent.”

Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, the head of a "kitchen cabinet" the pope created to draw up reform proposals, said that Archbishop Gerhard Mueller - who has opposed any loosening of Church rules on divorce - was a classic German theology professor who thought too much in rigid black-and-white terms.

"The world isn't like that, my brother," Rodriguez said in a German newspaper interview, rhetorically addressing Mueller in a rare public criticism among senior Church figures. "You should be a bit flexible when you hear other voices, so you don't just listen and say, 'here is the wall'," Rodriguez said in an interview with the daily Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger.

Rodriguez, archbishop of the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa, did not cite any possible reforms in particular but said the pope's critics, such as those upset by his attacks on capitalism, were "people who don't understand reality."

In the session with ZDF television, which aired in Germany on Saturday, Obama said he would not let US surveillance operations damage the trust among the United States, the German people, and Merkel.

"As long as I am president of the United States, the German chancellor need not worry about that," Obama said, according to a simultaneous German translation as he spoke. He (Obama) said that in foreign policy issues even close partners do not share the same views but that is no reason to spy on private communications.

The interview was broadcast a day after Obama ordered new limits on the way US intelligence accesses phone records from hundreds of millions of Americans and moved toward eventually stripping the massive data collection from the government's hands. Obama also promised to curb spying on allied leaders and to extend some privacy protection to foreign citizens - demands that have special resonance in Germany because of its bitter memories of massive domestic surveillance by the Nazis and East German communists.

November and December retail sales account for 20% to 40% of annual retail sales for most retailers. The number of visits to retail stores has plummeted by 50% since 2010. Please note this was during a supposed economic recovery. Also note consumer spending accounts for 70% of GDP. Also note credit card debt outstanding is 7% lower than its level in 2010 and 16% below its peak in 2008. Retailers like JC Penney, Best Buy, Sears, Radio Shack and Barnes & Noble continue to report appalling sales and profit results, along with listings of store closings.

Even the heavyweights like Wal-Mart and Target continue to report negative comp store sales. How can the government and mainstream media be reporting an economic recovery when the industry that accounts for 70% of GDP is in free fall? The answer is that 99% of America has not had an economic recovery. Only Bernanke’s 1% owner class have benefited from his QE/ZIRP [Quantitative easing /Zero Interest Rate Policy] induced stock market levitation.

The absolute collapse in retail visitor counts is the warning siren that this country is about to collide with the reality. Americans have run out of time, money, jobs, and illusions. The titans of Wall Street and their puppets in Washington DC have wrung every drop of faux wealth from the dying middle class. There is nothing left but withering carcasses and bleached bones.

It's the latest of about 300 store closures in the US that Sears has made since 2010. The news follows announcements earlier this month of multiple store closings from major department stores JC Penney and Macy's. Further signs of cuts in the industry came Wednesday, when Target said that it will eliminate 475 jobs worldwide, including some at its Minnesota headquarters, and not fill 700 empty positions.

Experts said these headlines are only the tip of the iceberg for the industry, which is set to undergo a multiyear period of shuttering stores and trimming square footage.

Shoppers will likely see an average decrease in overall retail square footage of between one-third and one-half within the next five to 10 years, as a shift to e-commerce brings with it fewer mall visits and a lesser need to keep inventory stocked in-store, said Michael Burden, a principal with Excess Space Retail Services. "I believe we're going to hear a lot more announcements in the coming months," Burden said. It's "an indication that there is a shift in the retail environment and it's one that will continue."

It is a spiritual initiative in which Christian communities have participated for over one hundred years, and is a time dedicated to prayer for the unity of all baptised persons, in accordance with Christ’s will “that they may all be one”. Every year an ecumenical group from one region in the world, under the guidance of the World Council of Churches and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, suggests the theme and prepares the activities for the Prayer Week.

This year the initiatives were prepared by the Churches and Ecclesiastical Communities of Canada, who have proposed the question posed by St Paul to the Christians of Corinth: “Has Christ been divided?”

“No, Christ is not divided”, said the Pope. “But we must recognise sincerely, although with suffering, that our communities continue to experience divisions, which are a scandal. There is no other word for it: the divisions between Christians are a scandal”.

Evoking the words of St Paul, he added, “Each one of you is saying, ‘I am of Paul’, and ‘I of Apollos’, and ‘I of Cephas’, and ‘I of Christ’. Even those who named Christ as their leader were not applauded by Paul, because they used Christ’s name to separate themselves from others within the Christian community. But the name of Christ creates communion and unity, not division!”

Whilst chairing a discussion between pro- and anti-Syrian regime pundits, Faisal Al-Qassem asked of the Syrian army, “Why don’t they learn from the Israeli army, which tries, through great efforts, to avoid shelling areas populated by civilians in Lebanon and Palestine [sic]? Didn’t Hezbollah take shelter in areas populated by civilians because it knows that the Israeli air force doesn’t bomb those areas?”

“Why doesn’t the Syrian army respect premises of universities, schools, or inhabited neighborhoods?” he continued, in a video shared by the Breitbart website. Al-Qassem, who is famous throughout the Arab world for his provocative style, also noted the differences between the way Israeli and western forces deal with violent demonstration, as opposed to the Syrian security forces.

“The Israeli army, if it wanted to break up a demonstration, would have used water cannons or rubber bullets, not rockets or explosive barrels as happens in Aleppo today,” he said. Al-Qassem’s choice of Israel to compare favorably to the Assad regime in Syria was likely meant to be particularly insulting to Assad, due to Al-Jazeera’s usual portrayal of Israel as a brutal oppressor.

"In every annual speech to parliament I say that, in my judgement as foreign minister, we should join. I am leader of this process because, politically, we want to be inside," Sikorski told a group of journalists in Brussels on Monday (20 January).

"Our judgement is that in the next decade the real European union will be inside the eurozone. And we want to be part of that." He acknowledged that the political, financial and economic case for joining the single currency will have to be made to the Polish people, whose support for the move has slumped from a high of 80 percent five years ago, at the outset of the economic crisis, to 30 percent today.

The deal includes new rules to limit speculation on financial products linked to what we eat. These so-called ‘commodity derivatives’ are derived from commodities, including agricultural commodities such as wheat, corn, soybean or sugar.

In a reaction to today’s deal, Marc Olivier Herman, Oxfam's EU policy advisor, said: “Today’s decision marks a good start in tackling ‘gambling’ on food prices which are a matter of life and death to millions in the developing world. The agreement introduces limits on speculating in spite of attempts by the UK and other governments to block any meaningful reform.”

“The Parliament has succeeded in making significant improvements to the legislation. Limits to the bets that speculators can make will apply to contracts traded ‘over the counter’ and throughout the lifetime of the contracts. This is good news for millions in the developing world, who can spend up to 75 per cent of their income on food, as well as producers who rely on stable food prices. It is also important for people across Europe struggling to cope with high and volatile prices.”

Last Tuesday, on the sidelines of a Social Democrat party caucus in Berlin, German Justice Minister Heiko Maas ran into Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Maas pulled his fellow SPD member aside and warned him about what could become a difficult matter. "Something may be coming our way," Maas whispered, and noted that the foreign minister could be affected as well.

Germany's federal prosecutor, Maas intimated, is currently considering opening an investigation into the scandal surrounding the surveillance of Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone by US intelligence. It's a step that would undoubtedly be considered an affront by the Americans.

Steinmeier listened attentively and nodded several times, but he didn't say much. At the start of his second posting as foreign minister (he previously served for four years from 2005-2009), Steinmeier is facing the extremely tricky problem of new discord in German-American relations. The current difficulties got their start in October, when SPIEGEL reported that US intelligence services were interested in Merkel's mobile phone. When the magazine published its report, the National Security Agency's curiosity suddenly became an open act of provocation.

In short, US President Barack Obama allowed Angela Merkel, his "friend," to be eavesdropped upon. It didn't go uncommented either. "We're no longer living in the Cold War," Merkel's spokesman countered. The chancellor also complained personally to Obama. Merkel staffers said Obama's reaction had been contrite, that he said he would quickly rectify the situation and that he offered far-reaching concessions. But Germany has been waiting in vain ever since.

The Government challenged the new powers, granted to the EU's Paris based regulator in 2012, to overrule national financial authorities in order to police financial markets as "unlawful" and an "institutional revolution".

In a binding ruling that will have implications for all new financial regulations from Brussels and that is a significant setback for George Osborne, the Chancellor, the European Court of Justice [ECJ] has thrown out Britain's objection that the new powers go beyond the EU's treaties.

"The power of the European Securities and Markets Authority (Esma) to adopt emergency measures on the financial markets of the Member States in order to regulate or prohibit short selling is compatible with EU law," ECJ judges ruled on Wednesday. "As all the pleas in law relied on by the United Kingdom have been rejected, the court dismisses the action in its entirety."

A spokesman said the Government would "consider the judgment in detail and respond, in full, at a later date". "We are disappointed that the ECJ has chosen not to uphold the UK's challenge on this case and, in doing so, has rejected the opinion of its own advocate general," said the spokesman.

The American military is still far from fielding armies of Terminator-type robotic killers though. Ideas under discussion instead include proposals to see manned lorries and transporters replaced by supply trains of robotic vehicles. Generals are studying proposals as the US Army is to slim down from 540,000 to about 490,000 soldiers by the end of next year. Some reports suggest it could dip below 450,000 by the end of the decade.