USA - The White House is "dusting off old plans" for a potential release of oil reserves to dampen rising gasoline prices and prevent high energy costs from undermining the success of Iran sanctions, a source with knowledge of the situation said on Thursday. US officials will monitor market conditions over the coming weeks, watching whether gasoline prices fall after the September 3 Labor Day holiday, as they historically do, the source said.

UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations has called an end to its military observer mission in Syria, days before its mandate expired. A small, civilian office will be set up instead to maintain political contacts. "The conditions to continue [the mission] were not filled," France's UN ambassador Gerard Araud said after a Security Council meeting. The UN mission had been part of envoy Kofi Annan's six-point peace plan. But continued violence made the observers' mission increasingly difficult.

SOUTH AFRICA - 34 people were killed when police clashed with striking miners at South Africa's Marikana mine on Thursday, the police minister has said. According to witnesses, police opened fire on strikers armed mostly with clubs and machetes. The Lonmin owned platinum mine has been at the centre of a violent pay dispute, exacerbated by tensions between two rival trade unions. Violence during the strike had already killed 10 people. The incident is one of the bloodiest police operations since the end of the apartheid in South Africa.

USA - While the pro-life women’s group Susan B Anthony List conducts its own bus tour, the abortion company Planned Parenthood will head out on the road as well in a bus tour covering 11 states. The tour will promote abortion and pro-abortion President Barack Obama.

PAKISTAN - A team of Taliban militants attacked a Pakistani air force base with suspected links to the country’s nuclear program before dawn Thursday, killing a security official in a heavy battle that ended with nine insurgents dead and parts of the base in flames, officials said.

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - MK Aryeh Eldad (Ichud Leumi) believes he has found a way for Israel to give Jews the freedom to pray at their holiest site, while avoiding Muslim violence. Jews should be granted certain times to ascend to the Temple Mount and pray, he said.

TEMPLE MOUNT, JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - A Palestinian flag is now flying on the Temple Mount, the most holy site on earth, where the First and Second Temples stood and the Holy of Holies was. Piece after piece of Eretz Israel is becoming a symbol of Arab nationalistic achievements.

ISRAEL - What will an Israeli strike on Iran look like? American blogger Richard Silverstein on Wednesday published what he claimed is an Israeli briefing document outlining Israel’s war plans against Iran. Silverstein, who authors the blog “Tikun Olam”, said the document was passed to him by a high-level Israeli source who received it from an IDF officer.

USA - New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has sent subpoenas to a number of major banks as part of his office's probe into the manipulation of Libor, the world's benchmark interest rate, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation. Barclays (BCS), Citigroup (C, Fortune 500), Deutsche Bank (DB), HSBC (HBC), JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and UBS (UBS) have all received subpoenas, according to the source. The subpoenas are yet another sign that investigators are pushing forward with their probe into how banks allegedly manipulated this key interest rate.

IRAN - Israel will be obliterated by chemical, microbial and nuclear bombs, Iran is warning, but those weapons of mass destruction will be used first on Tel Aviv by Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad at the start of a decades-old Muslim dream of destroying the Jewish state. An alarming commentary last week in Mashregh, the media outlet of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, confirmed that the Islamic regime not only has WMDs but has armed its terrorist proxies with them. Mashregh speaks for the regime.

INDIA - India plans to launch a space probe that will orbit Mars, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh confirmed on Wednesday after press reports that the mission was scheduled to begin late next year. The project would mark another step in the country's ambitious space programme, which placed a probe on the moon three years ago and envisages its first manned mission in 2016. The United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and China have all sent missions to Mars.

SYRIA - Intelligence reports claim that members of the al-Qaida terrorist network are streaming into Syria to join the rebel ranks. But the rebels deny the allegations and say that jihadists are not welcome. In any case, it is the Assad regime that has long had ties to al-Qaida. Some rebel checkpoints in Syria are currently flying the black flag of al-Qaida. When asked whether they know they are flying the al-Qaida flag, one of the fighters responds: "Of course we know, but is it al-Qaida's invention? It's also the flag of the Prophet, and we fly it because we are Muslims and we are waging a holy war."

GREECE - Greece has disappointed its creditors yet again. Now its government plans to ask for more time - and needs billions more in aid. But Greece's euro-zone partners are unwilling to provide any more help, meaning that the only hope now is to admit defeat and let the country make a fresh start.

EUROPE - Antonis Samaras' trip to Germany next week will be a complicated one. The Greek prime minister is expected to ask Angela Merkel for his country to be given two more years to adhere to the austerity conditions attached to the country's EU-IMF bailout program. With political resistance growing in Berlin, the chancellor has little leeway for compromise. In both the CSU and the FDP, public statements about the prospect of Greece's leaving the euro soon have been growing louder in recent weeks. "We don't want Greece to become insolvent but, if necessary, we could cope with the consequences," FDP party boss and Vice Chancellor Philipp Rösler told Spiegel Online.

USA - The mayor of Dallas declared a state of emergency in the ninth largest US city on Wednesday to combat the spread of West Nile virus infections, which has been more prevalent than usual in Texas and other states this year. There have been more cases of West Nile virus reported so far this year than any year since the disease was first detected in the United States in 1999, the Centers for Disease Control said on its website. Nearly half of the 693 human cases of the mosquito-borne West Nile virus infections reported this year to the CDC have been in Texas, along with 14 of the 26 deaths confirmed by the federal agency as of Tuesday.