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.’

All but one Republican voted against the measure, denying it the 60 votes it needed to advance past a procedural hurdle. Blockage of the Senate's first appropriations bill, along with a decision on Wednesday by Republicans in the House of Representatives to halt consideration of their own transportation funding measure, sends Congress back to the drawing board to find a way to agree on spending and taxes.

It marked the failure of a much-touted return to normal budgeting practices in Congress as a way to try to overcome deep fiscal divisions between the two parties. When Congress returns from a five-week recess in September, lawmakers will have just nine legislative days to craft a stop-gap funding measure to keep government agencies from shutting down as the new fiscal year gets under way on October 1.

"Every problem in this city revolves around jobs," said Lindsay Chalmers, vice president of non-profit Goodwill Industries of Greater Detroit. "That's at the heart of the issue for Detroit."

The decline of manufacturing jobs, above all in the automotive industry, has played a major role in the slide of the Motor City's population to 700,000 from a peak of 1.8 million in the 1950s. Despite recent gains, Michigan has 350,000 fewer manufacturing jobs than in 2000. Seismic shifts in the local labor market have left many unskilled workers behind.

At Detroit's high unemployment levels, employers in the Detroit area can "afford to be picky," Jacobs said. "Workers here often need training for new skills, but why should an employer bother doing that when there are thousands of workers to choose from?" he said.

"If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge him?" That was the disarming rhetorical question which Pope Francis put to journalists accompanying him back from Brazil; it prompted reports of a major shift in the church's attitude to same-sex relations. While carefully citing the church's catechism, he also said gays should be "integrated" into society rather than marginalised.

The church does not, of course, make major doctrinal refinements in off-the-cuff remarks to the press. Other procedures exist for that. And the reason the question even arose has to do with some very awkward news reports over the past month. One of Italy's best-known church-watchers has asserted that Pope Francis was trapped, in effect, by the gay lobby into naming a prelate with a very murky personal life to a job that would supposedly involve cleaning up the troubled Vatican bank.

Pressed about this matter, the pontiff said he hadn't come across any specifically "gay lobby" although there were plenty of other lobbies of "greedy people" in sight. A "quick investigation" had found the allegations about the newly appointed cleric to be unfounded, he insisted.

To a cynical mind, the pope's headline-catching refusal to judge gay people might sound like an artful way of neutralising the most embarrassing saga that has come to light during his young papacy. But Pope Francis has drawn a generally positive response from the secular world, even though he made it clear that the church still considered homosexuality a sin.

Public displays of affection by gays, including holding hands or displaying symbols like a rainbow flag, are now banned. Violators face steep fines and jail time; foreigners face similar penalties plus deportation. So what will happen to openly gay athletes and fans, as well as any vocal supporters or protestors, when Russia hosts the Winter Olympics next year in Sochi?

This week, comments by a lawmaker from St Petersburg set off a firestorm online when he said that fans and athletes would not be immune from prosecution during the games. Vitaly Milonov, who sponsored legislation in St Petersburg last year that became the basis for a national law signed by President Vladimir Putin in June, was quoted telling the Interfax news agency that the law will remain in place during the Olympics and will be applied to foreigners.

Over the past few years, special meetings of ministers of the German speaking countries have been systematically intensified. They are based on the extraordinarily close economic ties, which secure Germany a predominating position. By way of its ties to the media market, Germany achieves a significant ideological influence within the German speaking countries. These meetings of the alpine countries have now been extended to include the participation of Luxemburg.

This growing cooperation has been justified with the assertion that these countries constitute a "unitary cultural realm." However, the integration is not determined by culture, but is the result of German domination, supplanting the previously strong French influence in Luxemburg and Switzerland.

Parting from a solid economic and ideological base, Berlin is also increasingly drawing the German-speaking countries into its foreign policy plans. Last Friday's "quadripartite meeting," focused not only on themes deemed attractive for public relations - such as a common plea for a global ban on the death penalty - but also on the Egyptian crisis and the war in Syria. Foreign policy cooperation is reinforcing - under German leadership - the already strong economic bonds between the German-speaking countries "in the heart of Europe"

With the inclusion of Switzerland and Liechtenstein, this cooperation extends beyond the limits of the EU - and reinforces, as Berlin's national project, Germany's standing in Europe, regardless of the development of the European Union. At the same time, it draws previously neutral German-speaking countries into Berlin's expansionist policies. Switzerland already has its soldiers stationed on several foreign fronts alongside Bundeswehr soldiers - in the countries of the former Yugoslavia and in Afghanistan.

Now a Kenyan lawyer wants to overturn Pilate’s decision, though he wants to keep the faith that flowed from it. “The selective and malicious prosecution (of Jesus) violated his human rights,” said Dola Indidis, a Roman Catholic who is petitioning the International Court of Justice, based at The Hague, to nullify Jesus’ conviction and death sentence. Indidis, a former spokesman for the Kenyan judiciary, accuses Pilate, who was the Roman governor of Judea, of “judicial misconduct, abuse of office, bias and prejudice.”

That may well be the case, at least in the view of believers and many Bible scholars. But getting a court to rule on a 2,000-year-old case from an outlying province in a long-defunct empire will not be easy. Indidis first brought his case before the Kenyan High Court in Nairobi in 2007, but the court refused to hear it, saying it lacked jurisdiction.

Now he is turning to the International Court of Justice, often referred to as the World Court, which is best known for ruling on territorial disputes between members of the United Nations.