The INSA poll for German daily Bild showed support for the AfD, which was dogged by infighting in the first half of the year and saw its founder break away to form a new party, climbing to 5.5 percent, its highest level since late May.

"The refugee crisis is pulling the conservatives down and pushing the AfD over the 5 percent threshold," INSA head Hermann Binkert told Bild. Presenting its asylum policy at a news conference in Berlin last Monday, the AfD backed the introduction of border controls to stem the tide of refugees entering Germany from Hungary, via Austria. Over the weekend, Merkel bowed to pressure from state premiers, including Bavarian leader Horst Seehofer, and agreed to such controls.

In the interview, where questions were posed in Portuguese and the responses were given by Pope Francis in Spanish, the pontiff said coveting money will bring about both human and ecological ruin: “This is the tip of the iceberg. We see these refugees, these poor people who are escaping from war, escaping from hunger, but that’s the tip of the iceberg.

“But underlying that is the cause, and the cause is a socio-economic system that is bad, unjust, because within an economic system, within everything, within the world, speaking of the ecological problem, within the socio-economic society, in politics, the person always has to be the center. And today’s dominant economic system has removed the person from the center, and at the center is the god of money. It’s the fashionable god today.”

The sources, speaking to Reuters on condition they not be identified, gave the most forthright account yet from the region of what the United States fears is a deepening Russian military role in Syria’s civil war, though one of the Lebanese sources said the number of Russians involved so far was small.

US officials said Russia sent two tank landing ships and additional cargo aircraft to Syria in the past day or so and deployed a small number of naval infantry forces. The US officials, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said the intent of Russia’s military moves in Syria was unclear. One suggested the focus may be on preparing an airfield near the port city of Latakia, a stronghold of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

US officials have not ruled out the possibility that Russia may want to use the airfield for air combat missions.

Faced with a burgeoning refugee crisis in Europe sparked by global extremism, US and European officials said this week that there is a growing consensus that the multinational military campaign against Islamic State must focus more on targeting the group’s nerve centers in Syria. Using thousands of people flowing into Europe every day as a pretence, France and Britain are both poised to join Washington in carrying out more airstrikes with greater and greater levels of aggression against Islamic State in Syria.

The US officials said the intent of Russia’s military moves in Syria was unclear. One suggested the focus may be on preparing an airfield near the port city of Latakia, a stronghold of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

In all of this, it is Russia’s recent step up that is most concerning. Western backed sanctions currently crippling Russia’s economy over Ukraine will increase over its involvement in Syria. When that happens, it forces Russia further into the arms of China.

The purpose of this article is not to rationalise events in Syria, not to lay blame or point a finger but merely to highlight the fact that there is no dispute that there has been a very serious escalation of events in the war that is being conducted in Syria.The war in Syria is not about Islamic State.

It is to highlight the fact that the countries involved in this war are now from all four hemispheres of the planet who are now represented and engaged in a conflict that will definitely be a fight to the very end. The question is – where will that very end, end up being?

He added that economic reforms should not be neglected in favour of action from central banks. The comments come after the European Central Bank (ECB) said it would extend its stimulus programme if needed. The ECB launched its €1.1 trillion bond-buying scheme - a form of monetary policy or quantitative easing - in January to support the eurozone economic recovery, which the bank's president, Mario Draghi, said could be extended beyond 2016 if needed.

Mr Schaeuble has repeatedly warned against an over-reliance on central bank stimulus to prop up economies. He stressed the need for structural reforms stating: "When we call for structural reforms in return for financial assistance, this isn't some narrow-minded mantra being repeated by people who have lost sight of the big strategic questions of the future. In fact, this may well be the most important long-term strategic question we face today.”

Zainab Abbas said Abdullah Kurdi, the father of Aylan, was the driver of the boat which capsized in the Agean Sea and had lied to the world. Mr Kurdi has previously claimed he took over the wheel at the dinghy when the captain panicked and jumped ship into the water. An outpouring of sympathy and support for refugees followed the photo of Aylan's body washed up on Turkish shores.

Yet some have begun to pick holes in Mr Kurdi's story, with some claiming the images were manipulated and Aylan's body had been moved in order to take a more effective photos, according to the French newspaper Le Monde. Ms Tahseen told The Sydney Daily Telegraph her cousin told her Mr Kurdi was definitely at the wheel of the doomed boat for the entire journey.

The mainstream media is doing articles on “end of the world fears“, and it is being reported that 41 percent of all Americans believe that “we are living in what the Bible calls the last days.” For those that believe, the signs are everywhere – geopolitical instability, moral decay, steadily increasing numbers of natural disasters and a global financial system that could fall apart at any moment.

Others mock the idea that we could be living in “the last days”, and many of them point to the amazing technological progress that humanity is making and the unprecedented prosperity that we have been enjoying in recent times. If things are actually “getting better”, they argue, then how could we possibly be living in the end times described in the Bible? And of course atheists are convinced that God doesn’t exist at all, and that all of this apocalyptic talk is just a bunch of religious nonsense. So what is the truth?

For decades, the United States and much of the rest of the world has been in moral decline. Our nation has become a cesspool of wickedness, filth and corruption, and it is getting worse with each passing day. It has been said that if God does not judge the United States that He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.

Discussions are set to be dominated by the question of how to combat the rise of the Islamic State, or ISIS, in Syria as well as the nuclear deal recently agreed between the UK, its Western allies and Iran. Mr Netanyahu, who is a bitter critic of the nuclear agreement, told Mr Cameron: “The Middle East is disintegrating under the twin forces of militant Islam – militant Sunnis led by ISIS and militant Shi-ites led by Iran.”

Mr Netanyahu, who won re-election in March this year, oversaw a seven-week military operation in Gaza last summer to stop rocket fire coming into Israel. The conflict left 2,100 people dead, the majority of them Palestinians. He today repeated his recent declaration that he was "ready to resume direct negotiations with the Palestinians with no conditions whatsoever to entering negotiations ... immediately".

Ya’alon’s office states that the action is in line with a recommendation by the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency, and is in accordance with the position of the Israeli Police. Ya’alon has become convinced that the step is necessary to protect national security and public order.

The activities of these male and female groups “form a central component in the creation of tension and violence on the Temple Mount in particular, and Jerusalem in general,” the defense minister’s office says. It describes the activists as engaging in “dangerous incitement” against tourists, visitors, and worshipers on the Temple Mount, which leads to violence that could endanger lives.

“The goal of the Murabitun and Murabatat is to undermine Israeli sovereignty on the Temple Mount, change the reality and the existing arrangements, and harm freedom of worship. They are linked to – and are directed by – hostile Islamist organizations,” the defense minister’s office says.

The decree received approval from Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein.

A prominent economist was also on the list but asked that his name be withheld. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke was named, though not Janet Yellen, who succeeded him. Also pictured was Jim Walton, one of the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune, although he was misidentified in the caption as his late father, Sam Walton. Several other names on the list were misspelled.

Evan Kohlmann of Flashpoint Intelligence, an NBC News counterterrorism analyst, said that while much of the magazine's content is "somewhat aspirational," it has also played a role in actual plots. "There is compelling evidence from the Boston Marathon bombings and other various thwarted terror plots that homegrown jihadists have specifically looked to the magazine for guidance on what targets to attack — and have taken that advice quite literally," he said.