USA - 3-star General Daniel Bolger helped to lead the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The first sentence of his new book - Why We Lost: A General’s Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars – starts: “I am a United Sates Army general, and I lost the Global War on Terrorism. It’s like Alcoholics Anonymous; step one is admitting you have a problem. Well, I have a problem. So do my peers. And thanks to our problem, now all of America has a problem, to wit: two lost campaigns and a war gone awry.”

HOLLAND - The Dutch central bank has secretly brought a large part of the national gold reserves being held in a secure depot in New York back to Amsterdam. In total, 120 tonnes of gold valued at €4 billion has been brought back to the Netherlands by ship, Nos television said. The high security reparations for the move took months.

GERMANY - The “Danke Ungarn” campaign was launched in Germany on Friday; through continuing the summer campaign, Hungary is highlighting the common history of the two countries and their excellent economic and political relations. There are a total of some six thousand enterprises operating in Hungary that have been founded partly or fully using German capital, and which provide work to more than three hundred thousand people. Some 6 billion euros in German capital have been injected into Hungary since 2010 and more than fifty German companies have established new production units or expanded their existing capacities.

HUNGARY - Prime Minister Viktor Orbán presented Hungarian Order of Merit distinctions to German MPs at the Hungarian Parliament on Tuesday. In his speech, the Prime Minister emphasised that the reunification of Germany was the only guarantee that the Berlin Wall would never be rebuilt. “We think back with gratitude on those German politicians who decided in favour of rapid reunification, and who by doing so also guaranteed our freedom”, he said.

USA - The Ferguson, Missouri, grand jury considering the indictment of Officer Darren Wilson, who killed teenager Michael Brown during an altercation in August, left the justice center in St Louis on Friday without reaching a decision. Sources told CNN on Saturday that it was unclear when the jury would reconvene. Local business owners are bracing for more looting and vandalism.

MIDDLE EAST - It wouldn’t be the first time that a meeting of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) has taken place in an atmosphere of deep division, bordering on outright hatred. In 1976, Saudi Arabia’s former oil minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani stormed out of the Opec gathering early when other members of the cartel wouldn’t agree to the wishes of his new master, King Khaled. The 166th meeting of the group in Vienna next week is looking like it could end in a similarly acrimonious fashion with Saudi Arabia and several other members at loggerheads over what to do about falling oil prices. Whatever action Opec agrees to take next week to halt the sharp decline in the value of crude, experts agree that one thing is clear: the world is entering into an era of lower oil prices that the group is almost powerless to change.

UK - Revelations that politicians allegedly murdered and raped young boys is "only the tip of the iceberg" in the Westminster historic child abuse scandal, Theresa May has warned. The Home Secretary expressed dismay that institutions designed to protect children failed in the past and said she was determined to bring those guilty to justice, whatever their position. In recent weeks new allegations have emerged suggesting Tory MPs murdered and abused boys as part of an establishment paedophile network in the 1970s and 80s. Police are investigating the claims.

GERMANY - Germany is dropping a probe into the alleged tapping of Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone by US spies, due to a lack of evidence, magazine Focus said Saturday. Six months after the investigation began, the experts have failed to find any solid proof to back the case, and have therefore recommended that it be dropped, the magazine reported, quoting sources close to the German justice ministry. "The result (of the probe) is almost zilch. A lot of hot air, but nothing done," one source was quoted as saying. According to sources close to the judiciary, the federal prosecutor will heed the experts' recommendation to drop the probe. Privacy issues are particularly sensitive in Germany, as bitterness lingers over mass state spying on citizens by the Stasi secret police in former communist East Germany where Merkel grew up.

JAPAN - Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has dissolved parliament, paving the way for a snap election. Mr Abe is seeking a new mandate for economic reforms and is delaying an unpopular increase in sales tax. Mr Abe launched an ambitious economic plan, informally known as "Abenomics", two years ago when he became prime minister. Though Japan's GDP growth initially saw a lift, the economy continued to slide and Japan entered a technical recession this quarter. It was exacerbated by a rise in sales tax in April, from 5% to 8%. The increases were aimed at curbing Japan's public debt which is the highest among developed nations, but instead scared Japanese consumers off spending. A second increase, to 10%, was set for October 2015 but Mr Abe has said that will be delayed by at least 18 months.

JAPAN - Japan's military is wooing new recruits with images of smiling soldiers posing like pop stars in a series of photo books and DVDs that tap into youth culture. Jet pilots, navigators and sailors are among the 60 Japanese servicemen and women who pose in and out of uniform.

Video footage features a woman eating an ice-cream, another in a miniskirt, and men posing bare-chested. Uniformed personnel are pictured jumping for joy. "I think this approach definitely helps our message to be delivered to the younger generation," Yasushi Kojima, a spokesman for Japan's maritime force, said. The country's fast-ageing society and decreasing birth rates are a worry for military recruiters struggling to hire men and women to join the ranks of the Self-Defence Forces, which number around a quarter of a million.

CHINA - The news this week of China's largest corporate bankruptcy - Haixin Iron & Steel Group - amid crashing iron ore and steel prices was followed by analysts noting it "will be followed by others," as the major flaw of producers of iron ore, the most traded commodity after oil, is they tend to be "over-bullish." Distressed debt funds are starting to circle in preparation for what they expect to be a bloodbath as Bloomberg reports, bad debts in China are well underestimated because authorities persist in propping up weak companies and bailing out local investors, according to DAC Management, "we've yet to see it because if you look at corporate defaults, they keep getting covered by the government. At some point, they can’t cover every single one." Most worryingly though, as KPMG [auditors] points out, "when you see restructuring advisers getting hired by SOEs [State-owned enterprises]… you know it's coming."

JAPAN - The damage from an overnight earthquake in a mountainous area of central Japan that hosted the 1998 winter Olympics proved more extensive than initially thought. A daylight assessment Sunday found at least 50 homes destroyed in two villages, and 41 people injured across the region, including seven seriously, mostly with broken bones, officials said. The magnitude-6.7 earthquake struck shortly after 10pm Saturday west of Nagano city at a depth of 5 kilometers (3 miles), the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

ISRAEL - Historic negotiations with Iran will reach an inflection point on Monday [24th], as world powers seek to clinch a comprehensive deal that will, to their satisfaction, end concerns over the nature of its vast, decade-old nuclear program. But sharing details of the deal under discussion with The Jerusalem Post on the eve of the deadline, Israel has issued a stark, public warning to its allies with a clear argument: Current proposals guarantee the perpetuation of a crisis, backing Israel into a corner from which military force against Iran provides the only logical exit.

USA - Multiple sources tell CBS News that the announcement of a grand jury decision in the Michael Brown shooting case is not expected before Monday. A 12-member jury is weighing whether to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, who is white, with fatally shooting Brown, a black teenager who was unarmed, on August 9. The case triggered months of protests on the streets of Ferguson, some of which turned violent. Police arrested three protesters on Friday night, the third straight night of unrest.

Some activists are calling for widespread changes in the way police officers interact with the community, race relations and socioeconomic factors that led to the unrest. The community is bracing for the grand jury's report, with Brown's family joining President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder urging people to remain peaceful.

USA - In a city bracing for another convulsion, the waiting game looks like this: University students gather in a gym and rally for peace. Churches draw up plans for “safe spaces,” a refuge during potential chaos. Fringe groups pass out fliers advocating for various kinds of instigation if a grand jury decides not to indict a police officer who 3 1/2 months ago shot an unarmed teenager. It’s that decision, which authorities have for days signaled was imminent but now seems slow to come, that has brought St Louis into a bizarre holding pattern, with little agreement here about what will happen in the city after the grand jury resolution. Eyes were trained on this weekend as the decisive moment for an area that has been rocked by the shooting and the weeks of unrest, some of it violent, that immediately followed. But news came Saturday that the grand jury was still deliberating.