“Russia is destined to be a great power, not a regional power,” Sarkozy said during his speech at the Moscow State University of International Relations (MGIMO) adding that “those who forgot about the role of Russia made a grave mistake.” “But France did not forget,” he noted. The ex-president said that Russia is an indispensable part of global policy and without Moscow, it is impossible to resolve the challenges the world faces today.

The leader of the French Republican party also criticized attempts to isolate Russia, which according to Sarkozy make “no sense.” “We need to talk to Russia especially when we disagree,” he said. “This dialogue is not always easy because it requires respect, an effort to put aside clichés and stereotypes.”

The former president also said that EU-Russian relations are being tested now with the logic of confrontation being launched again. “We should not give in to that, but to replace it with the logic of rapprochement and cooperation,” Sarkozy said. Sarkozy also believes that Russia is one of the key actors in resolving the Syrian crisis and an “essential partner to find a way out” of it.

The group, which watches terrorist groups around the world, tweeted an image of the Arabic statement and wrote: "#IslamicState (#ISIS) terror group claims downing of Russian aircraft in #Sinai." The unverified statement, written in Arabic, says the flight crash was NOT a technical fault, as reported by security sources. It goes on to say that the attack was "in response to Russian airstrikes that killed hundreds of Muslims on Syrian land".

Last month Moscow launched a bombing campaign against the twisted terror group, which controls vast swathes of Syria and has forced thousands of people to flee the country. Vladimir Putin's bid to wipe out ISIS has been so successful that almost a million Syrians have elected to return to their homeland. The translated statement read: "The fighters of the Islamic State were able to down a Russian plane over Sinai province that was carrying over 220 Russian crusaders.

The accord will revive fears among Europe’s largest banks that the plans, which they have virulently opposed and were beginning to hope might be abandoned, could make it into law after a deal was hammered out late on Wednesday by representatives of the European parliament’s large centre-right and centre-left groups.

The measures would cover around 30 banks such as Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas that have either been judged as systemically important by international regulators or that surpass certain thresholds, such as having total assets of at least €30 billion and trading activities amounting to at least €70 billion.

The draft would ban such banks from proprietary trading — making financial bets using their own money — and in some cases require them to prove to supervisors that their investment banking activities did not pose a threat to financial stability. If the supervisor is not convinced, the bank would either be required to split off its trading arm or face a significant increase in its capital requirements.

Mr von Weizsäcker said that the deal would deliver a “meaningful proprietary trading ban,” notably because of restrictions put on banks’ relationships with hedge funds. He also said that, crucially, it “establishes the reversal of the burden of proof for banks with the most extreme balance sheets” — meaning it places the onus on banks to justify why their activities don’t pose systemic risks.

We’ve just witnessed the member countries of the UN agree to 17 Global Goals that will, all going well, transform our world by 2030. These Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have three ambitious aims over the next 15 years: end extreme poverty; fight inequality and injustice; and fix climate change. They will replace the Millennium Development Goals and will be measured by 169 indicators. The hope is that these goals and indicators will frame national policies and agendas, starting now.

This is an exciting moment in history, when positive change in the lives of millions of people around our world could at last be in our grasp. So, the next question is: How? How do we translate these goals into practical action? The idea of public-private partnerships (PPPs) is not a new one, but they could not be more relevant now. No one individual, organization or government is able to tackle the SDGs. But effective partnerships can.

Working together, governments, NGOs and the private sector can pioneer the kind of innovative, sustained and, most importantly, practical initiatives that can end extreme poverty or fight inequality. They can, for example, combine to raise awareness of what good hygiene and good nutrition mean, and encourage new habits that deliver them.

Therefore, the German government's efforts to intensify the German-Russian student exchange program must be supported. Already at the beginning of the Petersburg Dialogue, which has restarted, following a year's interruption, Chancellor Merkel explained that Germany is "interested in a reliable partnership with Russia."

Business functionaries are concluding that willingness to cooperate, which had waned due to the Ukraine conflict, is again growing "on both sides." Wolfgang Ischinger, Chairman of the Munich Security Conference, foresees a "diplomatic process" under Berlin's leadership that will lead to a further rapprochement during Germany's OSCE chair - beginning January 1, 2016. Ischinger explicitly points to similarities to the cold war's so-called détente policy, from which the West emerged the winner.

Speakers from her conservative Christian Democratic Union condemned her “open door” refugee policy in the harshest terms. “You don’t know who is coming,” said one delegate in front of 1,000 local party faithful. “You don’t know how many are coming. You don’t know how many are already here.”

Some even challenged Ms Merkel’s leadership, with one delegate declaring: “More and more citizens say to me, ‘This is no longer my chancellor’.” Others applauded when she pledged to stick to her “refugees welcome” approach, saying: “This is the biggest task I’ve faced in my life as chancellor. I know it’s a hard situation but I will not give up.” But the lasting image from Schkeuditz was a placard reading: “Stop the refugee chaos — depose Merkel”.

Migrants are also being provided with accommodation at luxury ski resorts and hotels while Europeans living in social housing are being given eviction notices to make way for the “refugees”. These are just two more examples which illustrate why some commentators assert that Europe is committing cultural suicide in order to accommodate the migrants, the vast majority of whom aren’t even Syrian and are not fleeing war.

Earlier this week we also highlighted how German security experts are warning that the middle class in Germany is becoming “radicalized” in response to the migrant influx and that domestic unrest may occur as a result.

“I think it’s a scandal to throw tenants out of their apartments,” the 56-year-old Ms Keller told SWR television. “I can’t see the sense of it.” Towns and cities across Germany are struggling to find accommodation for the tens of thousands of refugees streaming into the country. Ms Keller’s case follows that of Bettina Halbey, a nurse who is being evicted from her home of 16 years in the town of Nieheim, hundreds of miles to the north.

The municipality says it has offered to help Ms Keller find new accommodation, a claim she denies. She has hired a lawyer and vowed to fight the eviction.

If Finance Minister Bjarni Benediktsson has his way — and he likely will — Icelanders will be paid kr 30,000 [approx $4400] after the government takes over ownership of the bank. Íslandsbanki would be second of the three largest banks under State proprietorship. “I am saying that the government take [sic] some decided portion, 5%, and simply hand it over to the people of this country,” he stated.

Because Icelanders took control of their government, they effectively own the banks. Benediktsson believes this will bring foreign capital into the country and ultimately fuel the economy — which, incidentally, remains the only European nation to recover fully from the 2008 crisis. Iceland even managed to pay its outstanding debt to the IMF in full — in advance of the due date.

Iceland recently jailed its 26th banker — with 74 years of prison time amongst them — for causing the financial chaos. Meanwhile, US banking criminals were rewarded for their fraud and market manipulation with an enormous bailout at the taxpayer’s expense.

He also publicly admitted for the first time that MI5 had to carry out computer hacking attacks against terror networks to crack their communications. Delivering the Lord Mayor of London’s annual defence and security lecture, he said the current level of threat was the highest he had seen in a career spanning 32-years. In the past 12 months his agency has thwarted six terror plots in the UK and another seven abroad.

Mr Parker said four fifths of the 4,000-strong agency’s resources were directed at stopping terrorist attacks, with an increasing proportion of them linked to Syria and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

The climate treaty under negotiation is like a vampire from a bad old horror film. Every time you think it’s dead, it rises from the grave. This vampire is not sucking blood, but money and resources from taxpayers and needy people around the world. It’s time to put a stake through its heart and cut off the head of this climate-treaty monstrosity once and for all.

Congressional Republicans are working to do just that. Politico reports that Neil Chatterjee, a top aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has been making the rounds at foreign embassies alerting the countries’ diplomats that Republicans intend to fight President Barack Obama’s climate agenda until the end of his term and beyond.

In meetings with ambassadors representing both developed and developing countries, Chatterjee has reiterated McConnell’s message: “Proceed with caution before entering into a binding, unattainable deal” with Obama. McConnell has pointed out that two-thirds of the US federal government — Congress and the Supreme Court — have not signed off on Obama’s plans.

At the center of the controversy is a study that concluded there has not been a 15-year “pause” in global warming. Some NOAA scientists contributed to the report. Skeptics of climate change, including Smith, have cited the pause to insist that increased greenhouse gas emissions, mostly from burning fossil fuels, are not heating up the globe.

Smith, the chairman of the House Science Committee, vehemently disagreed with the study’s findings. He issued a subpoena for communications among the scientists and some data, leading to charges from Democrats that he was trying to intimidate the researchers. Late Tuesday, NOAA provided Smith with some more information about its methods and data but refused to give Smith everything he wanted.

“It was inconvenient for this administration that climate data has clearly showed no warming for the past two decades,” he said in a statement. “The American people have every right to be suspicious when NOAA alters data to get the politically correct results they want and then refuses to reveal how those decisions were made.”

The reborn success of demonic possession in popular culture owes something to the zombie, werewolf and vampire surge of the past decade. Horror movies used to play in theaters to a passionate but finite audience, mostly teens. They’d show up on opening weekends, then move on to the next offering.

The new wave of possession films could take scary movies even more into the mainstream. Possession is more personal than vampires and zombies — the threat comes from within. Teenagers especially relate to the notion of one’s body and mind being taken over by an uncontrollable force they can’t understand.