Those are just a few examples of “religious hostility” documented in a survey released by the conservative Family Research Council and the Liberty Institute. The survey found that attacks on Americans’ religious freedoms have dramatically increased, both in frequency and in the types of incidents.

"America today would be unrecognizable to our Founders," said Liberty Institute President and CEO Kelly Shackelford. "Our First Liberty is facing a relentless onslaught from well-funded and aggressive groups and individuals who are using the courts, Congress, and the vast federal bureaucracy to suppress and limit religious freedom. This radicalized minority is driven by an anti-religious ideology that is turning the First Amendment upside down.”

Arye Sharuz Shalicar was looking for a place he could call home. It wasn't an unusual wish. He doesn't wear a kippah and isn't a devout Jew. He grew up in Berlin's Wedding district, surrounded by Turkish and Arab children - a difficult combination. Later he wore the uniform of the German army during his military service. Then he went to college. But at some point Shalicar could no longer stand Germany, where he was subjected to daily harassment, open animosity and anti-Semitism.

In 2001, at the age of 35, Shalicar moved to Israel and started a career there. For the past three years he's been an Israeli army spokesman and isn't surprised about the most recent attacks on Jews in Germany. He says he grew up having to defend himself as a Jew - even with his fists, if necessary. Shalicar has written a book about his experiences, and says he still likes Germany. He visits his parents twice a year in Berlin, where they still live, and he looks back fondly on his childhood. "Germany will always be a part of me. I have a German accent when I speak Hebrew, and I speak to my son in German," he says.

But Germany couldn't offer him the home he desired. Has being Jewish in Germany become harder and more complicated, if not impossible? Is the Germany of 2012 no longer a country in which Jews can feel at home?

According to diplomatic sources in New York, the Iranian issue will be at the top of the agenda of the GA's speakers, although there will be no votes during the 10-day assembly. All Western leaders – including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Francois Holland – are expected to speak. Their presence in New York will pave the way for discussions on the Iranian issue.

US President Barack Obama's address will open the GA on September 25, and the Iranian president's address is expected the next day. [Mr] Obama will not wait in New York to meet with [Mr] Netanyahu, especially in light of his pressing election campaign. The window of opportunities for a meeting between the American and Israeli leaders will thus open on September 28 in Washington.

"A nuclear-armed Iran would not only pose a threat to Israel but to the stability of the entire region. A nuclear-armed Iran is not an option," he said. The so-called P5+1 group, comprising the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany, suspects that Iran may be trying to develop a nuclear weapons breakout capability.

Tehran insists its atomic ambitions are completely peaceful, but Israel - widely suspected to have the region's sole, if undeclared, nuclear arsenal - has warned that a nuclear Iran would pose an existential threat. It has said it would take all necessary steps to prevent that from happening, not ruling out a pre-emptive military strike.

"We will keep up sanctions and diplomatic pressure on Iran. We still see room for diplomacy," said Westerwelle in remarks relayed by his office. "We urgently call on Iran to enter into substantial negotiations." Sanctions by Western states as well as the UN Security Council aimed at forcing Iran to curb its nuclear activities have had a crippling effect on its economy, with its rial currency on Sunday sliding to a new record low against the dollar.

Meeting with [Mr] Netanyahu later in the day, [Mr] Westerwelle reiterated that Germany will "not accept" a nuclear-armed Iran. Addressing the recent slew of rockets from Gaza that hit southern Israel early on Sunday, [Mr] Westerwelle said Germany condemned "every kind of terrorist attacks against Israel," according to a statement from the Israeli premier's office.

Even less can happen if the German constitutional court issues a preliminary ruling on Wednesday blocking activation of the €500 billion ESM fund. Morgan Stanley's team – mostly Germans as in happens – put a 40 per cent likelihood on this happening. This is not to belittle the ECB plan for "unlimited" bond purchases. The Jesuit-trained Mario Draghi has pulled off a masterstroke, securing the assent of every northern ECB governor except the Bundesbank's Jens Weidmann, and crucially the assent of Germany's board member Jorg Asmussen, and indeed Chancellor Angela Merkel herself.

Italy's premier Mario Monti – a fellow 'Jesuit' – more or less confessed that this minor revolution could not have happened without the defeat of French leader Nicolas Sarkozy in May. The election upset broke the Franco-German axis and reordered the strategic landscape of Europe.

Mrs Merkel has bowed to vastly superior global power, but only partially. Italy and Spain will each have to sign a Memorandum accepting "severe" conditions. It will not be enough to meet their existing deficit targets. They will have to do more. If the Latins had any sweet illusions, these were surely dashed by the explosive response of the German media and political class to the Draghi Plan. "It will drive Germans to the barricades," said the unusually unflappable Suddeutsche Zeitung; it is "blank cheque", said Bild Zeitung. The euro is "kaput".

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.