NORTH KOREA - The United Nations says North Korea has requested immediate food aid after devastating floods last month. UN officials in Pyongyang said the need for aid was urgent after visiting flood-hit parts of the country to assess damage. North Korea state media said that at least 119 people died and tens of thousands were left homeless. Damage to infrastructure and farmland has affected the country's already dire food shortage problem.

INDIA - A summer drought makes a bad situation worse for an Indian economy already crippled by a sharp slowdown in growth, persistent inflation and a politically hamstrung government. Late on Thursday, New Delhi confirmed the first drought in three years as monsoon rains are likely to be less than 90 percent of the long-term average, dealing a blow to Asia's third-largest economy, where more than half the farmland lacks irrigation.

SYRIA - Nearly three million Syrians need food, crops and livestock assistance, according to a recent assessment carried out by the United Nations and the Syrian Government. Three million Syrians are in need of assistance, 1.5 million are in urgent need of food aid over the next three to six months, especially in areas that have seen the greatest conflict and population displacement. Close to one million people are in need of seeds, food for animals, fuel and repair of irrigation pumps, the assessment says, stressing that particular attention needs to be given to female-headed households, migrant workers and small farmers.

UK - The number of firms going into insolvency in England and Wales continued to rise in the second quarter of the year. The Insolvency Service said the number of firms going into receivership, administration or a company voluntary arrangement rose by 1.5% from the first quarter, to 1,310. That means company insolvencies were 6% up on a year ago.

SYRIA - Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is quitting as international peace envoy for Syria, frustrated by "finger-pointing" at the United Nations while the armed rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad becomes increasingly bloody. As battles raged on Thursday in Syria's second city, Aleppo, between rebel fighters and government forces using war planes and artillery, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced in New York that [Mr] Annan had said he would go at the end of the month. [Mr] Annan's mission has looked irrelevant as fighting has intensified in Damascus, Aleppo and elsewhere.

BERLIN, GERMANY - A European think tank, with ties to Germany, is calling for the establishment of an EU controlled "Grand Area" stretching from the Arctic, through Central Asia, the Middle East to North Africa.

ISRAEL - Time is running out for the international community to halt Iran's nuclear programme by peaceful means, the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, told US defence secretary Leon Panetta in Jerusalem on Wednesday.

SPAIN - Capital outflows from Spain quadrupled in May to €41.3 billion from May 2011 in a sign of waning confidence in the country's ailing banking sector. In the first five months of this year, outflows reached a record €163 billion, according to figures from the country's central bank.

GERMANY - There have been plenty of banking scandals, but none quite like this: Investigators and political leaders believe that the manipulation of the Libor benchmark interest rate was the result of organized fraud. Institutions that participated could face billions in fines and penalties.

LONDON, UK - So far $2 trillion has been created by the Fed and £375 billion by the Bank of England, but where has all this new money gone? The fact is that all the new money has been spent on buying bonds. QE has thus inflated bond prices and boosted bank profits, but achieved little else.

ISRAEL - Israel is likely to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities in a matter of weeks, former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy indicated, speaking to the New York Times. “If I were an Iranian, I would be very fearful of the next 12 weeks,” he warned. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned that any American plans must be carried out quickly. “Right now the Iranian regime believes that the international community does not have the will to stop its nuclear program,” he said. “This must change and it must change quickly because time to resolve this issue peacefully is running out.”

NORTH KOREA - Torrential rain and a typhoon in North Korea have killed 31 people and left 16 missing since Sunday, the official news agency reported on Wednesday. Earlier in July, a week of heavy rainfall and floods caused 88 deaths and left thousands homeless. It is feared that flooding in many parts of the impoverished country will deal a severe blow to North Korea's already malfunctioning economy. The storms destroyed 46,000 hectares of crops to exacerbate its already serious food shortage.

ISRAEL - Tens of thousands of Ultra-Orthodox rabbis attended ceremonies to mark the completion of their study of an ancient work of Jewish laws. The haredi men packed into two venues in Israel to celebrate a labour of love that has seen them learn one page of the 2,711-page Babylonian Talmud every day, a task that has taken seven-and-a-half years. In Jerusalem, around 20,000 rabbis attended Siyum HaShas at the Teddy Stadium for an event arranged by the Shas political movement.

USA - President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing US support for rebels seeking to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government, sources familiar with the matter said. [Mr] Obama's order, approved earlier this year and known as an intelligence "finding," broadly permits the CIA and other US agencies to provide support that could help the rebels oust [Mr] Assad. The White House is for now apparently stopping short of giving the rebels lethal weapons, even as some US allies do just that.

UK - UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage has claimed he "could not care less" who wins the next election as the UK is "governed from Brussels". Mr Farage, whose party wants to leave the European Union, suggested UK voters could no longer change governments but merely had a "choice of managers". He told the BBC the Conservatives were "virtually indistinguishable" from Labour and the Lib Dems on many issues. Mr Farage said there was "no way" the eurozone could survive in its current form and the exit of countries such as Greece and Spain would be a "liberation not Armageddon".