IRAN - A senior Iranian military commander on Wednesday said the Islamic Republic would “welcome war with the US” and “set fire to every military base from which a hostile US plane takes off,” according to reports in Iran’s state-controlled media.
USA - In a dramatic assessment of the domestic threat posed by the Islamic State, FBI Director James Comey said Thursday there are "hundreds, maybe thousands" of people across the country who are receiving recruitment overtures from the terrorist group or directives to attack the US.
USA - Chelsea Manning, the US soldier imprisoned for leaking the largest trove of classified documents in US history, has proposed, and drafted, a bill to strengthen protections for journalists reporting on government secrets.
UK - David Cameron has promised to lead a government for "one nation" and make "Great Britain greater" as he returned to Downing Street as prime minister. Speaking outside No 10 after visiting Buckingham Palace, he said the UK was "on the brink of something special".
UK - David Cameron says he hopes to govern for all of the UK as a BBC forecast gives the Tories 329 seats - enough to form a slender majority in the Commons. The prime minister said it was "too early to say" the final result but he hoped to form a government.
USA - A US spying program that systematically collects millions of Americans' phone records is illegal, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday, putting pressure on Congress to quickly decide whether to replace or end the controversial anti-terrorism surveillance.
USA - Severe storms tear through Midwest, bringing tornadoes, flooding and heavy winds. Multiple tornadoes tore through the central United States on Wednesday destroying homes and felling trees amid heavy rains that triggered local flooding. At least 29 tornado sightings had been reported across the states of Kansas, Nebraska, Texas and in Oklahoma, with multiple homes destroyed in Oklahoma. The tornadoes flipped cars, downed power lines and snapped trees. Several roads were closed because of debris, the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management said.
USA - With avian influenza continuing to wreak havoc in northwest Iowa, poultry producers may get some help disposing of more than 20 million chickens, turkeys and ducks infected by the deadly virus, officials said Wednesday. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources has issued three temporary permits to a Massachusetts company that would allow it to set up large portable incinerators in Sioux, Kossuth and Cherokee counties to help in the disposal of several million infected birds that have died from the disease or have been destroyed to prevent its spread.
VATICAN - In the midst of ongoing conflicts, European Christians must intercede with prayer and work actively together toward peace and dialogue. Pope Francis said these words this morning in the Vatican when addressing the Joint Committee of the Conference of European Churches (CEC) and the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE).
AUSTRALIA - A recent report by Australian investigative journalists has revealed that farms and factories supplying Australia’s major supermarket and fast food chains are using “extreme labour exploitation, slave-like conditions and black market labour gangs” targeting migrant workers from Asia and Europe.
UK - “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race,” Stephen Hawking warns. Elon Musk fears that the development of artificial intelligence, or AI, may be the biggest existential threat humanity faces. Bill Gates urges people to beware of it.
ISRAEL - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clung on to power by the skin of his teeth last night after hammering together a new coalition government at the eleventh hour. The prime minister reached a deal with the nationalist Jewish Home party shortly before a midnight deadline to avert an embarrassing scenario that would have forced him from office. But with a knife-edge majority of just one seat in the 120-member parliament, expectations were that he would have to expand the ruling alliance beyond his natural religious and rightist partners or battle for survival at every vote.
UK - The polls have opened in the most unpredictable General Election race for a generation as it emerged today that a quarter of voters say they could still change their minds. An exclusive eve-of-election poll for the Daily Mail by ComRes puts the Conservatives just a point ahead of Labour, though David Cameron has extended a huge lead over Ed Miliband as voters’ preferred prime minister.
EUROPE - Wolfgang Schaeuble says the Troika are not to blame for Athens' cash crisis, insisting the country had long been "living above its means". Germany's finance minister has insisted only Europe can save the bankrupt Greeks as the European Central Bank provided its biggest liquidity boost to the country in over three months.
GERMANY - Last week we commented on the latest travesty in the legal system when Deutsche Bank paid $2.5 billion to settle charges that it had manipulated LIBOR, EURIBOR and various other -BORs. As usual in situations such as this one, not a single banker went to prison, but there was some hope that Deutsche Bank's gross criminal conduct would at least land it on the SEC's "bad actors" list, which is like the Dodd-Frank equivalent of ‘time out’ and restricts the offender from participating in exempt securities offerings.