"Because somewhere out there, someone was watching. Someone whose job it is to piece together the things people do on the internet raised the red flag when they saw our search history." But instead of rehashing the old story of the NSA intercepting and recording virtually every form of electronic communication that exists, or ruminating on what filters Ms Catalano triggered to lead to this truly disturbing outcome, perhaps a better question is just what is it that Google knows about each and everyone who uses its interface daily, which in this day and age means everyone with a computer.

As it turns out, pretty much everything. Here is the thought, and not so "thought" experiment that the WSJ's Tom Gara ran yesterday, before Ms Catalano's story had hit, to uncover just how rich his informational tapestry is in the repositories of the firm that once upon a time urged itself, rhetorically, to "not be evil."

Let’s run through a little thought experiment.

Imagine there’s a list somewhere that contains every single webpage you have visited in the last five years. It also has everything you have ever searched for, every address you looked up on Google GOOG +1.86% Maps, every email you sent, every chat message, every YouTube video you watched. Each entry is time-stamped, so it’s clear exactly, down to the minute, when all of this was done. Now imagine that list is all searchable. And imagine it’s on a clean, easy-to-use website. With all that imagined, can you think of a way a hacker, with access to this, could use it against you?

And once you’ve imagined all that, go over to google.com/dashboard, and see it all become reality.

Around 26 million Britons are struggling with money - more than half of UK adults said they were struggling with their finances, Government-backed body the Money Advice Service (MAS) found. Income per hour has dropped by 6 percent in real terms since the previous research was carried out, making it harder for people to make ends meet.

A "live for now" culture and poor financial skills were also found to be likely causes. The report also revealed that a worrying number of Britons lack financial knowledge. Some 12 percent of those questioned believed the Bank of England's base rate, which has been at a historic 0.5 percent low for more than four years, was over 10 percent.

More than one third of people did not understand the impact that inflation has on their savings and 16 percent could not identify the correct balance on a bank statement.

Tens of thousands Syriac Christians – members of the oldest Christian community in the world – have fled their ancestral provinces of Deir al-Zour and Hasakah in northeastern Syria, residents have said.

"It breaks my heart to think how our long history is being uprooted," said Ishow Goriye, the head of a Syriac Christian political Hasakah. Mr Goriye, told The Daily Telegraph how, over the past two years he has watched as Christian families from Hasakah pack their possessions on the rooftops of their vehicles and flee their homes "with little plan to come back".

Conflict in the area, desperate economic conditions, lawlessness, and persecution by rebel groups born from the perception that Christians support the regime, remain the main reasons for why Christian families are fleeing the area. The growing presence of radical jihadist groups, including al-Qaeda, has also seen Christians targeted.

The twice a week cargo train will take 18 days to complete the journey taking half of the time required to transport goods by sea. The 10,214 km journey begins at the inland port of Zhengzhou and passes through Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus and Poland. Rail movement to Germany would be hugely cheaper compared to transportation by sea, air or road, officials said. Three other foreign rail links to Moscow, Almaty in Kazakhstan and Lithuania will be established by China by the end of this year.

"It can save a lot of time and money to import German electronic products, construction machinery, vehicles and parts, medical equipment and other high value-added products through this new international rail route," said Karl-Heinz Emberger, managing director of Central and North China, DB Schenker (China) Ltd, the logistics arm of Deutsche Bahn, Germany's national railway.

Why the plant intermittently emits steam; how groundwater seeps into its basement; whether fixes to the cooling system will hold; how nearby groundwater is contaminated by radioactive matter; how toxic water ends up in the sea and how to contain water that could overwhelm the facility's storage tanks.

What is clear, say critics, is that Tokyo Electric Power Co is keeping a nervous Japanese public in the dark about what it does know. The inability of the utility, known as Tepco, to get to grips with the situation raises questions over whether it can successfully decommission the Fukushima Daiichi plant, say industry experts and analysts.

"They let people know about the good things and hide the bad things. This culture of cover up hasn't changed since the disaster," said Atsushi Kasai, a former researcher at the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute. Tepco's handling of the clean-up has complicated Japan's efforts to restart its 50 nuclear power plants, almost all of which have been idled since the disaster over local community concerns about safety.

That has made Japan dependent on expensive imported fuels for virtually all its energy.

Fifty-one percent of Democrats support Washington providing federal assistance to Detroit, which last month became the largest American city ever to seek bankruptcy protection. Not surprisingly, there is a strong partisan divide on the question of a federal bailout for the Motor City. Seventy-three percent of Republicans oppose a bailout, while only 18 percent support the idea. Independents are nearly of the same mind as Republicans on the issue: 68 percent oppose federal assistance for Detroit and 28 percent support it.

The poll also shows a significant racial divide on the issue. Whites overwhelmingly oppose a federal bailout (63 percent against vs 26 percent in favor) while a solid majority of African-Americans support a bailout (57 percent favor vs 36 percent against) as do a plurality of Hispanics (48 percent favor vs 36 percent against).

A federal bailout for Detroit is very much a live issue politically. Michigan's congressional Democrats are vowing to find federal assistance for the city, while Republicans such as Kentucky Senator Rand Paul have declared that Washington will bailout Detroit "over my dead body."

The US has tried hard not to appear as if it is taking sides in the crisis. But when Kerry said Thursday in Pakistan that the Egyptian military was ‘‘'restoring democracy’’ in leading the July 3 coup, it left the impression that the US backed the military action. Kerry moved quickly to defuse the flap, saying on Friday that all parties — the military as well as pro-Morsi demonstrators — needed to work toward a peaceful and ‘‘inclusive’’ political resolution of the crisis.

His backpedaling came after his comments were denounced by Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, which insists that the democratically elected Morsi is the legitimate leader of Egypt.

In his interview with Geo TV in Pakistan TV, Kerry said, ‘‘The military was asked to intervene by millions and millions of people, all of whom were afraid of a descendance into chaos, into violence,’’ Kerry told the Pakistani television channel. ‘‘And the military did not take over, to the best of our judgment so, so far. To run the country, there’s a civilian government. In effect, they were restoring democracy.’’

On the south side of Oxford, just before the city gives way to lush green fields, stands a century-old factory.

In 1913, the first car rolled out of the gates at William Morris's Cowley factory. A hundred years on, the plant is still going strong. Today, it produces the Mini, one of the supreme symbols of British style, wit and ingenuity, loved and recognised across the globe.

On the surface, the factory seems a splendid all-English success story. After all, last year more than 300,000 Minis were sold all over the world.

But there is a twist in the tale. Far from being an emblem of British industrial success, the Cowley plant, like the Mini itself, has become the supreme symbol of a new economic empire, forged from the ashes of war - the empire of the Germans. For the somewhat uncomfortable truth is that more than half a century after Berlin burned in the death agonies of the Third Reich, Germany commands more raw power than at any time since 1941. But Angela Merkel's European empire is based not on military muscle, but on economic success. This is an empire of German engineering, German expertise and German exports, symbolised not by the Panzer, but by the Polo and the Passat.

Thanks to the success of their manufacturers, the Germans have become masters of Europe. And amid all the tribulations of the eurozone, from Athens to Lisbon, from Rome to Madrid, it is the Germans who call the shots. Since Britain had the good sense to stay out of the euro, it is tempting to tell ourselves that we have no part in this story. But when I investigated Germany's success for a BBC documentary, I realised how much we are fooling ourselves.

Cowley was once a beacon of British industrial power. But now, under the ownership of BMW, it has become an outpost of Germany's economic imperium. And it is far from alone. Goodwood, the Sussex home of Rolls-Royce, also belongs to BMW. And Bentley Motors - another British icon - is owned by Volkswagen. Last week, David Cameron visited the Bentley factory in Crewe and welcomed the news that it will produce its new £150,000 4x4 sports utility vehicle there, creating more than 1,000 jobs.

In William Morris's day, when Britain still saw itself as the workshop of the world, this would have been unthinkable. Indeed, not until the Seventies did British drivers buy more foreign cars than home-made models. But today, the story is very different. When YouGov asked British drivers to pick their preferred car brands, Volkswagen came top, with Audi second and Mercedes third.

Today, Germany exports more cars to Britain than to any other country on Earth. It is no exaggeration to say that British families' hard-earned cash lines German manufacturers' pockets, keeps their workers in jobs and pays for their generous welfare state. To put it another way, Germany's car manufacturers have succeeded where Adolf Hitler's generals failed.

The revelations have sparked widespread outrage in Germany, where elections are due next month. The agreement dates from 1968-9, and its cancellation is largely symbolic.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in a statement: "The cancellation of the administrative agreements, which we have pushed for in recent weeks, is a necessary and proper consequence of the recent debate about protecting personal privacy." Germans' experience of mass surveillance under the Communist and Nazi dictatorships makes them particularly sensitive to perceived infringements of personal privacy, and the country has strong data protection laws.

A German official told the Associated Press news agency that the agreement had not been invoked since the end of the Cold War, and admitted that the decision would have no impact on current intelligence co-operation.

That's why I need to premise this article with a disclaimer: This article is not about abortion. It's about the murder of children after they are born. Because once a child is born alive, terminating that life is no longer a "choice" … it's murder by every legal and moral standard. Because while abortion friends and foes can argue about when life begins in the womb, no one disagrees that a child born alive is, well, ALIVE… do they?

Indeed, they do. MSNBC talking head Melissa Harris-Perry insists that life only begins when the parents have a "feeling" that it begins. "When does life begin? I submit the answer depends an awful lot on the feeling of the parents. A powerful feeling - but not science," Harris-Perry said to nationwide astonishment on her July 21 MSNBC show.

And in one stroke, she simultaneously condones the murder of newborn infants (ie "post-birth abortion") while attacking the science of biology which unambiguously states that a living, breathing infant with a heartbeat and brain function is alive, not dead.

But don't tell that to the radical abortion whackos. Far beyond arguing for the "right" to abort a baby in the first or second trimester, many abortion advocates who run in the same circles as Melissa Harris-Perry are now publicly arguing that it is okay for parents to kill their children up to age three.

This is now being promoted as a "post-birth abortion."

That is certainly true when babies survive abortions and are born alive. Killing them becomes murder, the law says, which is precisely the issue in the case of Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, who is currently on trial for allegedly killing at least seven babies authorities and witnesses say survived abortion attempts.

Now, however, an official from Planned Parenthood, the taxpayer-supported organization that provides abortion, among other "women's health" services, has said her organization believes that mothers whose babies survive the procedure should have the right to have them killed nonetheless.

Alisa LaPolt Snow, the lobbyist representing the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, testified before a shocked panel of Florida legislators, who are considering a bill that would require abortionists to provide medical care to an infant who survives an abortion, that any such decision should be left to the abortion doctor and the mother.

"So, um, it is just really hard for me to even ask you this question because I'm almost in disbelief," said Representative Jim Boyd. "If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?"

"We believe that any decision that's made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician," Snow said, apparently unaware that such an act constitutes murder under most any other circumstances.

The student news agency ISNA had quoted Rouhani as saying: "The Zionist regime is a wound that has sat on the body of the Muslim world for years and needs to be removed."

However, Rouhani was seen in video footage broadcast by Press TV as saying: "In our region there's been a wound for years on the body of the Muslim world under the shadow of the occupation of the holy land of Palestine and the beloved al-Qods (Jerusalem)". He was speaking to journalists during an annual Qods Day rally in solidarity with the Palestinian people and to call for an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.

ISNA's version of his remarks echoed the fiercely anti-Israeli language of outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but was swiftly repudiated by Iranian state media which said news agencies had distorted what Rouhani had said.

Finding propaganda-free information has been difficult, until now. In recent months, courts, governments and vaccine manufacturers have quietly conceded the fact that the Measles Mumps Rubella (MMR) vaccine most likely does cause autism and stomach diseases. Pharmaceutical companies have even gone so far as to pay out massive monetary awards, totalling in the millions, to the victims in an attempt to compensate them for damages and to buy their silence.

The British government unilaterally withdrew the importation license for the single vaccines, therefore depriving parents of having these on the NHS.

[In an interview with Dr Wakefield, an advocate against the MMR, he confirmed] “I said to Dr Elizabeth Miller of the Health Protection Agency, ‘why would you do this, if your principal concern is to protect children from serious infectious disease? Why would you remove an option from parents who are legitimately concerned about the safety of MMR?’ And her answer was extraordinary. She said, ‘if we allow parents the option of single vaccines, it would destroy our MMR program.’ In other words, her principal concern seemed to be full protection of the MMR program and not protection of children.”

Dr Wakefield himself reiterates the final conclusion of the courts in various countries, but censored by the world’s media outlets saying: “Now this question has been answered not by me, but by the courts, by the vaccine courts in Italy and in the United States of America where it appears that many children over the last thirty years have been awarded millions of dollars for the fact that they have been brain-damaged by MMR vaccine and other vaccines and that brain damage has led to autism. That is a fact.”

Banks, retailers and traders are keen to get consumers to drop cash in favour of plastic because it is a much easier and cheaper way to handle and process payments. Behavioural Psychologist, Donna Dawson, said consumers are more likely to spend more if they use a card rather than cash. While they might be good for the business, many shoppers will view that as a disadvantage.

She said: ‘As a society, we are beginning to demand the ease and convenience of being ‘cashless’, and those service providers who do not keep up will lose out. The most important reason for service providers to take heed is that using a card changes our fundamental shopping behaviour.’