USA - President Barack Obama and members of both American political parties believe that a Yes vote in the Scottish referendum would "weaken" the US-UK relationship, a congressman has warned. Brad Sherman, a Democrat who has championed the union cause in Congress, said the US foreign policy establishment was united in its hope that Scotland would stay a part of Britain. "You will not find anyone involved in American foreign policy - from the President on down - who does not think that this division will weaken the alliance that we have," Mr Sherman said. With seven days left until Scots go to the polls, the referendum is beginning to draw attention in Washington and both Democrats and Republicans told The Telegraph they hoped for a No vote next week.

USA - US President Barack Obama has said he will not hesitate to take action against Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria as well as Iraq. In a nationally televised speech outlining his strategy against IS, he said that any group that threatened America would "find no safe haven". He also announced that 475 US military personnel would be sent to Iraq but said they would not have a combat role. IS controls large parts of Syria and Iraq after a rapid military advance. Its fighters have become notorious for their brutality, beheading enemy soldiers and Western journalists on video.

USA - Never has a declaration of war been so cautious. Never has an American president spent so much time talking about what the declaration doesn't mean and left so many questions about what it does mean. But what President Obama put forth in his nationally televised address Wednesday night still was a declaration of war — even if he did prefer to call it a "counterterrorism campaign." What made it more remarkable was that it was delivered by a president who ran for office on an antiwar platform and hoped his legacy would be leaving the nation at peace. This is the president who, 19 months ago in a speech at the National Defense University, stated that the war on terrorism, "like all wars, must end"; who 33 weeks ago in his State of the Union address said, "America must move off a permanent war footing"; and who 14 days ago told reporters that "we don't have a strategy yet" for combating the Islamist terrorist group, ISIS, that has seized broad swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria.

ISRAEL - Israel is unlawfully coercing almost 7,000 Eritrean and Sudanese nationals into leaving the country at great personal risk, Human Rights Watch says. They have been denied access to fair and efficient asylum procedures and detained unlawfully, a new report says. Earlier this year, African asylum seekers in Israel staged mass protests over their treatment. Israel says its policies on illegal immigrants and refugees comply with international law. It insists that the Africans are not asylum seekers but economic migrants who see Israel as an attractive destination because it is the nearest developed country where they can find jobs.

EUROPE - Along the frontiers between Spain and Morocco, Greece and Turkey and Hungary and Serbia, the EU is deploying brutal methods to keep out undesired refugees. Many risk everything for a future in Europe and their odysseys too often end in death. There is virtually no legal path to Europe for refugees - not for most Syrians, of which only very few are brought to Germany as so-called contingent refugees, not for Iraqis and not for people from troubled West African countries. Those wishing to apply for asylum in the EU must arrive illegally first - on smugglers' boats, hidden in minibuses or traveling with forged passports on commercial flights. The EU is sealing itself off, fearing that if it fails to do so, even more people will come, particularly from poorer countries. But it is also true that the transformation of the EU into a fortress has created the conditions that have led to deaths along its borders.

USA - A strong solar flare is blasting its way to Earth, but the worst of its power looks like it will barely skim above the planet and not cause many problems. It has been several years since Earth has had a solar storm of this size coming from sunspots smack in the middle of the sun, said Tom Berger, director of the Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. The flare on the sun barely hits the "extreme" on forecasters' scale, but with its worst effects missing Earth it is only looking "potentially strong" at most when it arrives at Earth as a solar storm, he said. New calculations from satellite data show that the worst of the energetic particles streaming from the sun likely will go north or above Earth this time, Berger said late Wednesday.

EUROPE - The UK will oversee financial services in the new 28-strong European Commission - a surprise move that delighted the UK's PM David Cameron. The job goes to Jonathan Hill, former leader of the House of Lords. France also got a powerful post - ex-Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici, a socialist, will run EU economic policy. There has been intense national rivalry over the top jobs.

UK - Dealing a sizeable blow to pro-independence campaigners, Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, has said that “a currency union is incompatible with sovereignty”. Speaking at the TUC Congress in Liverpool, Mr Carney made clear that an independent Scotland would fail to meet the criteria of a successful currency union. A proper union would require free trade, banking union, and a fiscal backstop, he said. “You only need to look across the channel to see what happens if you don't have all of those components in place”, said Mr Carney. The Governor noted the Westminster view of Scottish independence would make creating the conditions for a formal currency union impossible. City analysts now predict that both Scotland and the rest of the UK could suffer financially if the 300-year-old Union ends.

UK - The City watchdog is making plans for Scottish independence, anticipating a flood of queries from firms worried about the consequences of a “yes” vote. John Griffith-Jones, the chairman of the Financial Conduct Authority, said the regulator is making contingency plans around ensuring it is equipped to deal with a surge in calls and able to give advice if Scotland votes to secede in next week’s referendum. Many details of what an independent Scotland would look like remain unanswered just over a week before the vote, leading to considerable uncertainty about the impact of a yes vote. However, he admitted that the thorny issue of financial regulation will become even more complex in the event of a “yes” vote.

USA - There are few truisms about the world economy, but for decades, one has been the role of the United States dollar as the world’s reserve currency. It’s a core principle of American economic policy. But new research reveals that what was once a privilege is now a burden, undermining job growth, pumping up budget and trade deficits and inflating financial bubbles. To get the American economy on track, the government needs to drop its commitment to maintaining the dollar’s reserve-currency status. It is widely recognized that various countries, including China, Singapore and South Korea, suppress the value of their currency relative to the dollar to boost their exports to the United States and reduce its exports to them. They buy lots of dollars, which increases the dollar’s value relative to their own currencies, thus making their exports to us cheaper and our exports to them more expensive.

EUROPE - Immigration backlash is on the rise in Europe. As prominent nations within the EU grow increasingly burdened with floods of immigrants from the Middle East and Eastern Europe, concern is growing among citizens that foreigners are diminishing local culture and costing jobs, and these fears are being reflected in political action. Anti-immigration groups like Austria’s Freedom Party and France’s National Front Party are seeing their largest support in decades.

GERMANY - With his visit to India, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is seeking to strengthen German relations with a potential rival of China. He arrived Saturday in New Delhi to intensify economic and political cooperation. In view of the persisting Euro crisis and the decline of business transactions with Russia, Germany is seeking to find alternative export opportunities for its companies. Berlin is also seeking close cooperation in the fields of foreign and military policy to support an integration of India into the Western alliance. India's new President Narenda Modi, who has been strongly criticized because of his party's anti-Muslim slander and his role in the 2002 pogroms, is currently intensifying cooperation in foreign and military policy with Japan and Australia, two central Western allies of the Pacific Basin. Australia is moving closer to NATO and Japan is intensifying the conflict with the People's Republic of China.

ISRAEL - Two years after Israel’s Masorti (Conservative) Movement approved the ordination of gay and lesbian rabbis, the nation’s first homosexual Masorti rabbi has taken his place at the pulpit. Rabbi Mikie Goldstein, a native of Liverpool, England, who has been living in Israel since 1989, was installed on Thursday evening as the leader of Adat Shalom Emanuel in Rehovot, the only non-Orthodox synagogue in the city. “My motto is to give Judaism back to the people,” says Goldstein, 49. “I feel that the Orthodox establishment in this country has hijacked Judaism and decided there is only one way to be Jewish… I realized that if someone is going to make a stand, it’s going to be me. So I got off my behind, and I went to study.”

USA - The US city of Phoenix, which has been experiencing a long drought, was hit by record rainfall for a single day leading to the deaths of two people. Floods turned freeways into rivers and rescue services had to pull drivers from their cars. A woman died after being swept away in her vehicle, and in a separate incident a 76-year-old woman drowned. The flooding came as Arizona was lashed by storms brought by the remnants of Hurricane Norbert in the Pacific. A total of 3.29 inches of rain was measured at Phoenix airport, easily surpassing the previous daily record of 2.91 inches set in 1939, the National Weather Service said. It was more rain than had fallen throughout the whole summer.

UK - Powerful investors across the world have woken up to the possibility that Scotland may vote to break up the United Kingdom, with some already preparing defensive action that risks a potentially dangerous flight from sterling and Britain’s bond market. Japan’s biggest bank, Nomura, has advised clients to slash financial exposure to the UK and brace for a possible collapse of the pound after polls showed the independence campaign running neck and neck, warning that the separation of England and Scotland after more than 300 years would be a “cataclysmic shock”. “The 'fast money’ funds started moving a week ago but now we are seeing 'real money’ clients acting,” said Jordan Rochester, the bank’s foreign exchange strategist. “The risks are suddenly seen as much greater for Japanese pension funds.”