Carter lashed out at the US political system when the issue of the previously top-secret NSA surveillance program was touched upon at the Atlantic Bridge meeting on Tuesday in Atlanta, Georgia. "America has no functioning democracy at this moment," Carter said, according to Der Spiegel.

He also believes the spying-scandal is undermining democracy around the world, as people become increasingly suspicious of US internet platforms, such as Google and Facebook. While such mediums have normally been associated with freedom of speech and have recently become a major driving force behind emerging democratic movements, fallout from the NSA spying scandal has dented their credibility.

It’s not the first time Carter has criticized US intelligence policies. In a previous interview with CNN, he said the NSA leaks signified that “the invasion of human rights and American privacy has gone too far." He added that although Snowden violated US law, he may have ultimately done good for the country.

The service was led by Imam Al Hammouri, a member of the Jerusalem-based pan-Islamic Hizb ut-Tahrir (party of Liberation) organization, founded in 1953. The group, which boasts a worldwide membership of approximately one million across 40 countries, is dedicated to establishing a worldwide Islamic Caliphate (Muslim Empire) that will force Islamic law upon all of its subjects.

The gathering was allowed by Israeli and Jerusalem authorities as part of the regular Friday weekly Islamic prayers (Friday being the Islamic Sabbath), especially within the context of the holy Islamic month of Ramadan. Promoted as a demonstration of support for the deposed Islamist Muslim Brotherhood-backed former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, participants in the gathering brought posters bearing Morsi’s photo to the mosque. They yelled “Down with peaceful solutions!” and “Whoever negotiates with America... is a collaborator and a coward.”

Al Hammouri threatened, “We are the Nation of Islam – a giant and mighty nation, which extends from east to west. Soon we will teach you a political and military lesson, Allah willing. Allah HuAkbar. All glory to Allah.” The situation on the Temple Mount has become increasingly dangerous for Jews, despite the fact that the site is technically under Israeli sovereignty.

Concerning shoppers and the community, the event also raised significant alarm amongst the Oregon Department of Agriculture, which has now enacted a temporary ban on the pesticide used in this incident, and for an additional 17 other insecticide products containing the chemical dinotefuran.

Dinotefuran, a popular insecticide found in agricultural, professional and household products is an insecticide of the neonicotinoid class, a class of insecticides widely suspected to be the primary cause of the global bee and pollinator die-off we are witnessing today. Neonicotinoids include a number of other insecticides other than dinotefuran, and have for decades been suspected of being especially dangerous to bees.

Responding to a question by MK Yaakov Litzman (United Torah Judaism), Elkin said that the Foreign Ministry has not signed nor does it intend to sign any agreement transferring all or parts of the tomb.

The Tomb of King David, located on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, is also home to a church, which claims ownership of the site, more specifically of a room in the compound in which the Catholic Church claims the "Last Supper" occurred.

Elkin said that there is a longstanding economic agreement between the Vatican and Israel. This agreement relates to taxes, fees, and individual claims on Vatican property and while there have been demands to include the “Last Supper” room as part of it, the Foreign Ministry has made it clear that control of the site will not be handed to the Vatican whatsoever.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, General Sir David Richards said that “if you want to have the material impact on the Syrian regime’s calculations that some people seek” then “ground targets” would have to be “hit”. The Chief of the Defence Staff also warns that the Government needs to clarify its “political objective” in Syria before a coherent military plan for dealing with the Assad regime can be recommended.

Last month, David Cameron and Barack Obama indicated that they would look at military measures after evidence emerged showing that the Syrian regime was using chemical weapons against its citizens. However, in recent days, the Prime Minister’s enthusiasm for further intervention appears to have waned following private warnings from Sir David and Sir John Sawers, the head of MI6, about the implications of being drawn further into the Syrian civil war.

David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism laws, said extremists are not the only ones who “have an interest in magnifying the threat” and called for caution in keeping the danger realistic. He said government, security officials and even industry have a vested interest in the seriousness of the terror treat and over-egging it can lead to “unnecessary fears and powers”.

In a wide-ranging annual report, Mr Anderson also warned that British jihadists are helping international terrorists become more dangerous by providing English language skills to spread their message and connect them with fanatics in the UK. He said the terror threat in general is changing with the greatest danger now coming from “lone wolves” who plan less complicated, smaller but still deadly outrages.

The IMF's Article IV report on China states - as clearly as the IMF dares - that excess credit has been pushed to the outer limits of sanity, and that there is a growing risk of an "adverse feedback loop" as the financial system and the economy take each other down in a mutually reinforcing spiral.

The deeper thrust of the IMF report is that the growth model of the past 30 years is exhausted. The low-hanging fruit has been picked. If the Communist Party fails to take radical action, it will soon be caught in the middle income trap.

Beijing replied dismissively that "vulnerabilities were well under control". It said the fast growth of wealth products and trusts were a healthy sign of "market-based intermediation". Any risks were "manageable". Bad loans in the banking system "remained low and Chinese banks had some of the highest capital and provisioning ratios in the world". Do you laugh or cry?

MPs cheered in the House of Commons as it was announced that royal assent had been given to the new Bill, paving the way for the first same-sex weddings next spring. The Queen, who is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, gave her formal approval to the Bill – one of the most radical pieces of social legislation of her reign – this afternoon. But it marks the end of the centuries-old understanding of marriage as being solely between a man and a woman in the UK.

The Roman Catholic Church described it as a “watershed” in English law and said that it marked a “profound social change”. Ben Summerskill chief executive of Stonewall, said the move would “bring joy to tens of thousands of gay couples and their friends and families.” But the Evangelical Alliance, which represents thousands of churches and Christian charities claimed it had turned marriage into a “fluid, gender-neutral institution” defined by “consumer demands and political expediency”.

Meanwhile Dr David Landrum, director of advocacy at the Evangelical Alliance, said: "Marriage has not been extended; it has been redefined and effectively privatised to privilege adult choice. The changes have stripped husband and wife of their obvious meaning and marginalised adultery and consummation. Marriage has been made into a fluid, gender-neutral institution defined by consumer demands and political expediency. The state has created a form of marriage that is no longer the lifelong union between a man and a woman for the procreation of children and the foundation of family life."

In the UK, Bank of England rate-setters voted unanimously to leave QE unchanged at £375 billion for the first time since October last year and, in the US, Federal reserve chairman Ben Bernanke again hinted that money printing would be slowed later this year if the economy remains strong. However, both central banks were clear that the end of QE would not mean the end of monetary stimulus. Minutes to the Bank’s July rate-setting meeting showed that alternatives to QE are likely to be launched as early as August, prompting speculation that rates could be low until 2016.

At the Fed, Mr Bernanke stressed that “a highly accommodative monetary policy will remain appropriate for the foreseeable future” even if QE is tapered off. Jittery stock markets reacted calmly to the news, in contrast with the wild reaction when the Fed first hinted at “tapering” in June. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average edged 0.2 percent higher after Mr Bernanke’s testimony. In London, the FTSE 100 closed up 0.2 percent at 6,571.93 points.

Traders and economists expect the US to begin winding down its $85 billion-a-month QE programme in September and halt it completely in the middle of next year. But, Mr Bernanke was careful to say that the Fed will respond to the data, and could accelerate the programme if the economy weakened.

The latest remarks by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán are unlikely to improve his fractured relations with Germany or the EU. Speaking on Tuesday, he invoked the memory of World War II to warn against German leadership of the European Union.

"When a person reads about a rapprochement between Russia and an EU led by Germany, he looks out to see whether his children are still in the yard," Orbán said on Tuesday in remarks to an annual meeting of Hungarian ambassadors, according to the German news agency DPA. Orbán made the comment in answer to a question by one diplomat about relations between the EU and Russia.

Many people in Central and Eastern Europe are wary of any signs of closer ties between Moscow and Berlin because they remember the Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact which carved up much of Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence.

One Israeli official described the new rule which will come into force on Friday, as an “earthquake” for EU-Israeli relations. The notice prohibits all 28 EU states from providing any “grants, prizes and financial instruments funded by the EU” that benefits anyone in the settlements. The settlements – effectively villages and towns – are Jewish communities built on what is internationally regarded as Palestinian land. They are considered illegal under international law.

The new regulation requires any new agreement to carry a clause guaranteeing that the settlements are not part of the arrangement, and also apply to the annexed Golan Heights. Mr Netanyahu, said: “As prime minister of Israel, I will not allow the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who live in the West Bank, Golan Heights or our united capital, Jerusalem, to be harmed. We will not accept any external diktats about our borders. This matter will be settled only in direct negotiations between the parties.”

While many in Israel deny it, the settlements are regarded by EU officials as one of the biggest obstacles to any lasting peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Paul Fisher, the Bank’s executive director for markets, told MPs on the Treasury Select Committee (TSC) that a QE programme may have been “manipulated” by gilt edged market makers (GEMMs) in October 2011. He passed the information onto the financial regulator, which is still investigating the case.

If evidence of attempted manipulation is found, he said: “It would be thoroughly reprehensible and appropriate actions would follow.” The claims follow the Libor rate-rigging scandal, which shamed the banking industry and saw several lenders fined hundreds of millions of pounds. Three bankers have been charged with fraud in the UK. The latest allegations relate to a “reverse auction” of gilts conducted by the Bank on October 10, 2011, shortly after QE2 started. On that day, one lender tried to sell gilts to the Bank at an inflated price. Officials spotted the sudden spike and pulled out of the deal.

The Bank then reprimanded the lender and passed the information to the Financial Services Authority, now the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), to investigate whether there had been market abuse. The subject was raised in Parliament later that month, when David Cameron said bankers caught trying to rig gilt prices should face the “full force of the law”.

A trans-Atlantic gap of 5.6 percentage points is unprecedented in modern times and appears to reflect the starkly different policies pursued by the two major blocs since the Lehman crisis. The OECD listed many measures that can help mitigate the effects of unemployment and ease the way for displaced workers to find new jobs but left no doubt that the real villain is the contractionary policy mix in Europe.

“The main policy priority must be to take action to underpin aggregate demand and boost consumer and investor confidence. Monetary policies have to remain accommodative. The speed of fiscal consolidation should be calibrated to avoid excessive tightening,” it said. Michael Darda, from MKM Partners, said the great difference between the US and Europe is that bold action by the US Federal Reserve has offset austerity, while the European Central Bank has chosen not to do so. “Monetary policy remains highly relevant,” he said.

This is not a recent phenomenon, but now there are several factors which are accelerating this trend. One of them is Obamacare. The truth is that Obamacare actually gives business owners incentive to cut hours and turn full-time workers into part-time workers, and according to the Wall Street Journal and other prominent publications this is already happening all over the United States. Perhaps this is part of the reasons why the US economy actually lost 240,000 full-time jobs last month.

In fact, if you can believe it, the second largest employer in the United States is now a temp agency. Kelly Services is actually the second largest employer in the country after Wal-Mart. Isn't that crazy? At this point, employees are increasingly considered to be expendable "liabilities" that can be dumped the moment that their usefulness is over.