• The government is spying on virtually everything we do

• The government’s mass spying doesn’t keep us safe

• NSA spying did not prevent a terror attack on Wall Street

• There is no meaningful oversight of the spying programs by either Congress or the courts

• We can keep everyone safe without violating the Constitution … more cheaply and efficiently than the current system

• A high-level intelligence source says “we hack everyone everywhere”

• Spying started before 9/11 … and may have stemmed from an emergency program only meant to be activated in the case of a nuclear war

• Governments and big corporations are doing everything they can to destroy anonymity

• Mass spying creates an easy mark for hackers

• Polls show that the public doesn’t believe the NSA

• Surveillance can be used to frame you if someone in government happens to take a dislike to you

• An NSA whistleblower says that the NSA is spying on – and blackmailing – top government officials and military officers

• High-level US government officials have warned for 40 years that mass surveillance would lead to tyranny in America

• Government spying has always focused on crushing dissent … not on keeping us safe

• Top constitutional experts say that Obama is worse than Nixon … and the Stasi East Germans

Francis paid tribute to pope emeritus Benedict XVI in the encyclical, saying that the ex-pontiff had "almost completed" the text before stepping down in a historic resignation this year and that he himself had merely added "further contributions."

The 82-page text stresses that there is no contradiction between the Catholic faith and the modern world and calls for more dialogue with scientists, other religions and non-believers. It also restates the Catholic Church's position on marriage saying it should be a "stable union of man and woman."

In a deliberate echo of Harold MacMillan’s 1950 speech which attacked apartheid in South Africa, the Archbishop warned church leaders that they needed to reassess their own attitudes to gay people – even if they do not “like it”.

While insisting he had no immediate plans to change policy on issues such as gay marriage, he announced a major campaign to curb anti-gay bullying in the Church of England’s more than 5,000 schools. He is understood to have approached Stonewall, which led the campaign in favour of gay marriage, to invite it into church schools to teach up to a million children about homosexuality. “We may or may not like it but we must accept that there is a revolution in the area of sexuality,” the Archbishop said.

On the morning of April 24, 2013, at about 8:45 am, the Rana Plaza, a nine-storey building housing factories and offices, collapsed in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka. More than 3,500 people were in the building at the time, and 1,129 died in the wreckage. Mainuddin Khandaker, a senior official at the Ministry of Home Affairs, began his investigation that evening.

In the last few years, he has investigated more than 40 cases of factories that either collapsed or burnt down. But none of those accidents approached the scale of Rana Plaza, the biggest industrial accident in the country's history. The 493-page report Khandaker wrote contains witness statements, photos and structural engineering calculations. It will probably remain under lock and key. An investigative report on the textile industry has never been published in Bangladesh, he says.

Khandaker goes into the next room and returns with a stack of paper, the summary. He eats a berry from the bowl and carefully spits the seed onto the saucer. "Time pressure, lots of money, a lack of scruples and greed - everything came together on that day," he says.

Some of Canada’s largest banks, insurance companies and pension funds met with government representatives and the Bank of Canada in Toronto on June 21 to discuss establishing a yuan trading hub, according to the Toronto Financial Services Alliance, an industry group that set up the meeting. Representatives of Chinese banks also attended the meeting, the group said, declining to name them.

The moves to set up a trading hub in Canada come as an organization representing Frankfurt’s financial industry predicts the European Central Bank is nearing a deal with China that will help the German financial center become a European yuan trading hub.

The Bank of England signed a similar but smaller agreement last month, joining other recent additions like Australia, Turkey, Brazil and South Korea as China pushes for greater use of its currency outside the mainland. To have a trading hub, a country’s central bank must have an agreement with China’s central bank to swap its currency for yuan.

The initial reactions will be a spike in equities and a fall-off in the valuations of the Pound and the Euro to the Dollar. These, however, are first blush reactions as the color fades from the bloom.

It may well be, as Europe is in much worse financial condition than the United States, that there is a policy reason for the European positions but it may well also be a calculated move to devalue the major European currencies. Whatever the actual reasons, the European statements have certainly sounded the trumpet that the “Currency Wars” have reignited.

Those who examine the facts on the ground and look at the short-lived rule of Morsi and Muslim Brotherhood with a critical eye know that this was far from a coup. Anger against Morsi's leadership was building up to a tipping point and far-seeing analysts saw this coming.

The military alone can't get tens of millions Egyptians onto the streets to remove a president they don't like. Military leaders were responding to events and the force of public opinion. Was the military happy to nudge the protests along and see the Muslim Brotherhood suffer a defeat? Yes, but the unpopularity of Morsi and the Muslim Broterhood was their own doing. This is the bigger picture that many in the media are missing.

Morsi was doing unpopular things and damaging the reputation of Egypt by calling for a holy war in Syria against Assad and threatening an unnecessary war against Ethiopia over a Dam Project. Many people believe the dispute over the Nile is resolvable through negotiations, including the late Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. Morsi was not "ousted" by the military; he was overthrown by his people with the helpful aid of the military. I know it's hard to believe in these cynical times but popular mass protests can lead to unforeseen political change.

The proposal involves using bone conduction technology, which is used in hearing aids, headphones and Google’s Glass headset, to pass sound to the inner ear via vibrations through the skull. A video for the Talking Window campaign released by Sky Deutschland and ad agency BBDO Germany states: “Tired commuters often rest their heads against windows. Suddenly a voice inside their head is talking to them. No one else can hear this message.”

The voice comes from a Sky-branded transmitter made by Audiva that is attached to the train window. BBDO spokesman Ulf Brychcy said: “If our customer Sky Deutschland agrees, we will start with the new medium as quickly as possible.” Sky Deutschland said it had not made a decision on whether to launch the campaign.

For the past several years, the central bankers of the planet have been able to get markets to do exactly what they want them to do. Stock markets have soared to record highs, bond yields have plunged to record lows and investors have literally hung on every word uttered by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and other prominent central bankers. In the United States, it has been remarkable what Bernanke has been able to accomplish.

The US government has been indulging in an unprecedented debt binge, the Fed has been wildly printing money, and the real rate of inflation has been hovering around 8 to 10 percent, and yet Bernanke has somehow convinced investors to lend gigantic piles of money to the US government for next to nothing. But this irrational state of affairs is not going to last indefinitely. At some point, investors are going to wake up and start demanding higher returns. And we are already starting to see this happen in Japan. Wild money printing has actually caused bond yields to go up.

What a concept! And that is what should happen – when central banks recklessly print money it should cause investors to demand a higher return. But if bond investors all over the globe start acting rationally, that is going to cause the largest bond bubble in the history of the planet to burst, and that will create utter devastation in the financial markets. Central banks can manipulate the financial system in the short-term, but there is usually a tremendous price to pay for the distortions that are caused in the long-term.

China has been notably relaxed about her own people acquiring gold, and the government itself appears to be absorbing all of China’s mine output. Russia is also building her official reserves from her own mine supply. The result over time has been the transfer of aboveground gold stocks towards these countries and their allies. The geo-political implications are highly important, but have been ignored by western governments.

China and Russia see themselves as having much in common: they are coordinating security, infrastructure projects and cross-border trade through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Furthermore, those at the top have personal experience of the catastrophic failings of socialism, which have not yet been experienced in Western Europe and North America. Consequently neither government subscribes to the economic and monetary concepts prevalent in the West without serious reservations.

We saw evidence of this from Russia recently, with Putin’s appointment of his own personal economic adviser, Elvira Nabiullina, as the new head of Russia’s central bank. Ms Nabiullina is on record admiring, among others, the writings of Robert Higgs – a leading US economist of the Austrian School. She is therefore likely to take a strong line against the expansion of bank credit, which is confirmed by Russian commentators who believe she will prioritise reforms to strengthen bank balance sheets.

She is not alone. The People’s Bank of China recently let overnight money-market rates soar to over 20%. The message is clear for those prepared to look for it: they are not going to fuel an extended credit bubble. The two countries have learned how damaging a bank-credit-fuelled business cycle can be, and are determined to restrict bank lending. Western commentators find this hard to understand because it does not conform to the way western monetary policy works.

The comedic drones at Bloomberg, and officials of the London Metal Exchange itself would have us believe this is due to “warehouse queues.” While precious metals bulls undoubtedly appreciate the imagery implied of a 100-day line-up of armored cars waiting to load their bullion – in the middle of this “bear market” – the implication is fallacious.

In an era of just-in-time inventories; the notion that there can be a 100-day backlog to load bullion into armored cars with the metal already sitting in the warehouse is ludicrous. Clearly what the LME is really reporting here is a greater-than-three-month delay to refine the gold (or silver) being purchased here – and then ship it to their warehouse.

In other words, the “bullion” which traders believe they are purchasing today is in fact merely ore which hasn’t even been dug out of the ground yet. While gold and silver miners have nearly eliminated the suicidal “hedging” which the banking cabal used to suppress the sector even further in previous years; the banksters are now effectively “forward-selling” the gold and silver of these mining companies – by selling “gold” and “silver” which doesn’t even exist yet.

The massive, unprecedented bullion demand (in the face of falling prices) is unequivocal, empirical proof of the criminality of the banksters in these markets. The failure of our regulators to intervene in this prima facie crime is unequivocal, empirical proof of their own complicity in this crime. (Official) bullion default or (unofficial) market decoupling is now an absolute near-term certainty, unless prices are allowed to reverse radically higher in the very near future. Indeed, the speed with which these markets are being driven to inventory default must lead one to suspect that such a default is the intent of the banking cabal.

Her view was shared by many of those who lived in the various council estates where I grew up. Single parenthood was the normal method of rearing children. While my own father left our home when I was young, my mother, who has lived in Britain since emigrating from Jamaica with my grandparents, has been devoted to her children. Although my father was a good dad and maintained contact, lots of my friends were not so fortunate. Few had any involvement with their fathers.

In many of these homes, the State was almost invariably the main breadwinner, with the families in receipt of welfare cheques. With the State providing unceasing financial support, there was little thought given to the costs and responsibilities of having children. For example, a 15-year-old girl at my school happily told me that her ambition was to have a baby before she reached the age of 18 — a goal she easily achieved.

Another said that she was trying for a baby with her boyfriend who she didn’t expect to hang around after the birth. In both cases, they knew that social security would look after them. Such attitudes were common among my school contemporaries and were compounded by the fact that the school itself had depressingly low expectations of pupils. Indeed, at times it felt more like a youth centre, somewhere to hang out and pass the time, than a place of education.

Children who grow up in these places rarely come across a male role model. Today, around half of British births take place outside wedlock, while over a quarter of all families are headed by lone parents.

The non-binding resolution, which was passed by 483-98 with 65 abstentions on Thursday, said the US should provide full disclosure about its email and communications data. If Washington fails to agree, two EU-US transatlantic information-sharing deals could be revoked.

Both data-sharing deals – the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) and Passenger Name Records (PNR) were agreed shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, despite apprehension surrounding whether or not they would give the US too much access to European data.

The TFTP provides the US Treasury with European stored data on international financial transfers, while the PNR covers data provided by passengers when booking tickets and checking in on flights. It then passes this information to the Department of Homeland Security.