The constitutional court is under international pressure to rule in favour of the European stability mechanism and fiscal pact. A dissenting ruling from the court, based in Karlsruhe, South Western Germany, would probably cause havoc on money markets and cast doubt on the future of Europe's single currency.

"The German constitutional court cannot afford to be seen as not being independent, but it also cannot afford to be seen as the court that brought down the government," said Constanze Stelzenmüller, a senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin. "They're going to have to try to square the circle; in other words, not bring down the government at the same time as asserting their independence."

The ruling, due on Wednesday, is expected to give the go-ahead to the ESM, a permanent bailout mechanism, and the fiscal pact, but with caveats such as constraints on future decision-making or a ruling that Germany's basic law has to be rewritten if there is to be further EU integration.

A government insider told the Observer, on condition of anonymity, that the court "is very independent and always good for a surprise. Nobody knows what will happen on 12 September." A poll published on Friday on Spiegel Online showed that 54% of Germans were in favour of the court blocking the legislation, reflecting the degree to which public opposition to bailouts is increasing.

After World War II, the West gave Germany two great gifts. The first gift was democracy; the second gift was being integrated into a Europe of free nations. This also included the overriding vision that one day both gifts could be combined to create a democratic United States of Europe. But there was a lack of determination and strength to accomplish this. To make matters worse, both gifts have suffered from the attempt to use a common currency to integrate Europe. Postwar German democracy has never been in such a sorry state as today. It has been a long time since the peoples of Europe eyed each other with so much mistrust.

That is the current situation. Next week, Germany's Federal Constitutional Court will issue another ruling on Germany's euro policy. This is not expected to clear the air or fundamentally improve the situation. A court decision cannot accomplish that. But something must happen. We cannot allow both democracy and Europe to go to rack and ruin. Democracy and European integration form the foundations of our country. The problem is that they have come into contradiction with each other.

Assuming the debt mania doesn't continue to spiral out of control, it's a fact that democracy impedes a rapid rescue for the euro, while a rapid rescue for the euro undermines democracy. Such a contradiction begs a decision. What is more important to the Germans: their democracy or Europe? Or is there a way to reconcile the two, democracy and Europe? It isn't easy. It cannot be done without risks.

Open Europe produced an analysis of the decision which is cited by Bloomberg Businessweek, Forex info and El Economista. Open Europe’s Raoul Ruparel is quoted on the front page of City AM saying, “Borrowing costs are mostly a symptom of the underlying differences and problems – not a cause… Unless these issues – mismatched competitiveness, under-capitalised banks, lack of growth prospects and political uncertainty – are tackled then masking the gap in borrowing costs can only, at best, buy time.” The market reacted positively to the decision with borrowing costs dropping for struggling countries and stock markets rallying across Europe.

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann was the only member of the ECB Governing Council to vote against the measures. In a statement the Bundesbank said that Weidmann regarded the bond purchases “as being tantamount to financing governments by printing banknotes,” adding, “The announced interventions carry the additional danger that the central bank may ultimately redistribute considerable risks among various countries’ taxpayers.”

Meanwhile, the ECB decision drew widespread criticism in Germany. Die Welt argued that “Financial markets celebrate the death of the Bundesbank”, adding that [Mr} Draghi had “brazenly broken with the principles of German monetary policy.” CDU MP Klaus-Peter Willsch said Berlin should “not shy away from an action before the European Court of Justice against the ECB.”

The European Central Bank’s announcement on Thursday that it will commence unlimited purchases of short-term sovereign bonds from struggling euro zone countries was greeted with hostility from both the Bundesbank (Germany’s central bank) and the German press. However Romano Prodi, ex-leader of the European Commission and twice-prime minister of Italy, said it was in Germany’s interest to accept it could not be the sole decision-maker in the euro zone as “Germany alone cannot be leader of the world.”

“If Europe wants to survive, it must have a big European infrastructure,” Prodi said, speaking at the Ambrosetti Forum, an annual international conference held on the shores of Lake Como in Italy. “Of course Germany will be the leader of that, because of its numbers, its quality, but Germany alone cannot be leader of the world, so — and maybe I’m too rational — I think it in the interest of Germany to share this job with other countries.”

The American Society of Civil Engineers recently gave the US a grade of “D” for its infrastructure on an A-F scale. The group recommended that America spend $2.2 trillion on repairs and maintenance to bring the crumbling country back up to standard. After Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, the US government was forced to spend $14.5 billion to build flood defenses, levees and pumps to prevent another catastrophe. While no levees fell apart after Hurricane Isaac this year, the US is still suffering the deterioration of many of its other infrastructure elements.

“America has scrimped on taking care of the public furniture, endangering people and weakening the economy as bridges rust, roads crumble, dams weaken and water mains leak,” writes David Cay Johnston, author of The Fine Point, in an article for the Daily Beast.

The worst infrastructure is corporate-owned, writes Johnston. High-pressure oil and natural-gas pipelines can easily explode without warning, electric power poles need to be replaced, and the telecommunications system is gradually getting worse. Of 2.5 million miles of pipeline in the US, one third are older than 40 years – which played no small role in the 10,483 reported pipeline accidents or explosions in the past decade. Many high-pressure pipelines have almost 70 percent of their walls corroded, but have still been granted safety-inspection waivers by the Department of Transportation – even though the National Academy of Engineering warned about these dangers in 2004.

In 2010, a natural-gas pipeline explosion caused the deaths of 8 people and the destruction of 38 homes near San Francisco.

Crumbling infrastructure can also be found in the US transportation system. Each year, traffic jams caused by insufficient infrastructure waste a total of 4 billion hours of commuters’ time and 3 billion gallons of gasoline. Overall, a decaying transportation system costs $78 billion annually in lost time and fuel, according to carinsurance.org. Additionally, one in four US bridges are unstable or carrying more traffic than designed for.

This summer’s record-breaking drought that plagued most US states has also left its mark on the country’s infrastructure. A US Airways jet became stuck in melted asphalt. A subway train derailed after the heat stretched its tracks. From highways to homes, infrastructure has been shrinking and cracking, causing billions of dollars in damages. Nuclear power plants have been forced to shut down because the heat raised the temperature of their cooling water. And in a struggling economy, each additional natural disaster will take its toll on the already-weak US infrastructure, putting American lives and finances further at risk.

The directors of three major United Nations food and agriculture programs sounded the alarm both on the immediate problem of high food prices and the “long-term issue of how we produce, trade and consume food in an age of increasing population, demand and climate change.”

Agricultural production has fallen in a number of major crop exporters this summer. Sweltering heat and a severe drought have damaged the corn crop in the United States. Droughts have also hit Russia and Ukraine, hurting the wheat harvest, as well as Brazil, affecting soybean production.

Low yields have translated into high prices. Last week, the World Bank reported that food prices climbed 10 percent from June to July, with the price of both corn and wheat jumping 25 percent to records. Soybean prices climbed 17 percent over the same period, and rice prices declined moderately, the Washington-based institution said. The United Nations agencies warned that too few countries were producing too large a proportion of staple crops — leaving the world more vulnerable to droughts and floods.

After nearly 11 years, many by now have grown numb to the sting of losing soldiers like Private (First Class) Shane W Cantu of Corunna, Michigan. He died of shrapnel wounds in the remoteness of eastern Afghanistan, not far from the getaway route that Osama bin Laden took when US forces invaded after September 11, 2001, and began America's longest war. Cantu was 10 back then.

Nearly every day the Pentagon posts another formulaic death notice, each one brief and unadorned, revealing the barest of facts - name, age and military unit - but no words that might capture the meaning of the loss. Cantu, who joined the Italy-based 173rd Airborne Brigade on September 11 last year and went to Afghanistan last month, was among five US deaths announced this past week, as the Democrats and Republicans wrapped up back-to-back presidential nominating conventions.

American troops are still dying in Afghanistan at a pace that doesn't often register beyond their hometowns. So far this year, it's 31 a month on average, or one per day. National attention is drawn, briefly, to grim and arbitrary milestones such as the 1,000th and 2,000th war deaths. But days, weeks and months pass with little focus by the general public or its political leaders on the individuals behind the statistics.

Each week at war has a certain sameness for those not fighting it, yet every week brings distinct pain and sorrow to the families who learn that their son or daughter, brother or sister, father or mother was killed or wounded.

“Today, the church schism is neither wanted nor justified politically,” the statement entitled “Ecumenism Now — one God, one faith, one Church” reads. “Will theological factors, institutional habits and ecclesiastic and cultural traditions sustain the schism between the churches? We don’t think so.”

The statement calling for an end to the 500-year-old schism between the churches was signed by politicians including the head of the German parliament Norbert Lammert, Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere, and head of the opposition Social Democrat Party Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Also among the 23 Catholic and Protestant signatories were TV host Guenther Jauch, head of the German Olympic Sports Federation Thomas Bach and author Arnold Stadler, as well as artists and academics.

The statement said that both Vatican II, which opened 50 years ago next month and the Reformation, which is approaching its 500th anniversary in 2017, had a major impact that continues to be felt across different denominations. The initiative calls for lay members of the churches to play an active role in taking these anniversaries as an opportunity for change. Both the DBK and the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD) cautiously welcomed the initiative — with some reservations.

“The idea for the “Ecumenism Now” initiative has had a very positive reception,” Thies Gundlach, vice president of the EKD said in a statement. “It is an effort to see the future of ecumenism not only as the responsibility of church leaders, but also to remember that strengthening unity is the responsibility of all Christians. We are grateful to see that Evangelic and Catholic Christians are more unified than they are disconnected.”

Police inaction and an educational culture that encourages Jewish children to treat Christians with "contempt" has made life increasingly "intolerable" for many, Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Custodian of the Holy Land, said. Father Pizzaballa's intervention, unusually outspoken for a senior Catholic churchman, came after pro-settler extremists attacked a Trappist monastery in the town of Latroun.

The door of the monastery was set on fire and its walls were covered with anti-Christian graffiti that denounced Christ as a "monkey". The incident is the latest in a series of acts of arson and vandalism this year targeting places of worship, including Jerusalem's 11th century Monastery of the Cross, built on the site where the tree used to make Christ's Cross is held to have been planted. Slogans reading "Death to Christians" and other offensive graffiti were daubed on its walls.

Earlier this year, Michael Ben Ari, an Israeli legislator, publicly ripped up a copy of the New Testament in the country's parliament, the Knesset, and threw it into a rubbish bin after denouncing it as an "abhorrent" book. A second legislator called for Bibles to be burnt. Although Mr Ben Ari was criticised by the Knesset's speaker, he faced no official sanction despite protests from the church. "Such a serious thing occurs and no one does anything," Father Pizzaballa said. "In practice, it negates our existence here."