ECUADOR - Ecuador is planning to create the world’s first digital currency issued by the country’s central bank, in what is seen by many as a step to abandon the US dollar, the currency now used by the Central American country. The currency is expected to start circulating in December, according to the country’s Central Bank. The technical details or the name of the currency have not been revealed, although the officials stated that it would not be a crypto-currency like Bitcoin. The new currency is expected to co-exist with the US dollar, the current official money Ecuador uses, and will be channeled for 2.8 million people in the country – 40 per cent of the participants in the economy – who are too poor to afford the usual banking.

UK - Nothing has been learnt from the madness of the 1929 stock market crash as once again traders reach for record amounts of debt to pile into rising share prices. The level of margin debt that traders are using to buy shares in the stock market reached the highest levels on record, according the latest data from the New York stock exchange. US traders borrowed $460 billion from banks and financial institutions to back shares, and once cash and credit balances held in margin accounts of $278 billion is subtracted this left net margin debt of $182 billion in July. Traders are now more exposed to a fall in share prices than at the height of the dot-com bubble at the turn of the century, and just before the financial crisis during the 2007 peak.

UK - Poor manufacturing data could signal the end of a hot streak for UK growth. Surveys of the nation's manufacturing sector saw an unexpected fall this August, as purchasing managers' index (PMI) figures dropped from 54.8 to 52.5. While still above 50 - suggesting that the sector continues to expand - the data pointed to a fall in the pace of growth. "While the worst days of the recession are definitely behind us", said Jeremy Cook, of currency firm World First, "PMI surveys also suggests that the finest days of the recovery are too."

MIDDLE EAST - Al QAEDA has called on terrorists to bomb British targets such as Sandhurst and the MI5 headquarters as well as famous department stores. A publication produced by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) this week has called for jihadists to launch deadly attacks during Friday prayers so as to avoid harming fellow Muslims. The sickening online magazine also suggests US targets for "lone-wolf" attacks such as New York City's Times Square and popular Las Vegas casinos and nightclubs. The news comes after the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) raised the terror threat to severe – the second-highest level. Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley National Policing Lead for Counter-Terrorism, said yesterday: “The threat level from international terrorism has changed from SUBSTANTIAL to SEVERE in response to the developments in Syria and Iraq. This means it is highly likely that a terrorist attack could happen in the UK.”

GERMANY - In an indication of Germany’s growing role on the world stage, the country’s top politicians on Sunday approved the delivery of thousands of machine guns and hand grenades, as well as hundreds of antitank missiles, to Kurdish forces battling Islamic militants in Iraq. Scarred by its militarism and two resounding defeats in the 20th century, Germany once shied away from conflict zones and limited its involvement to deliveries of humanitarian aid. But, although Chancellor Angela Merkel has yet to articulate a clear policy on intervention, she and her top ministers have dominated efforts to ease the Ukraine crisis. And on Sunday, they moved to approve the weapons for the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. A solid majority in Parliament backs sending weapons, while opinion polls indicate that up to two-thirds of Germans — weaned on decades of pacifism — oppose the move.

MIDDLE EAST - Advances by jihadists in Syria and Iraq, and US calls for a coalition against them, have made Gulf monarchies set aside disputes over Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood, analysts say. Wary of spectacular gains made by Islamic State jihadists, the oil-rich monarchies fear the militants could advance towards their own borders, where the extreme ideologies could find support. “The biggest danger (in the Gulf) comes now from these (emerging) terrorist groups, and not from the Muslim Brotherhood,” said Abdulaziz Sager, head of the Gulf Research Centre think tank. Qatar’s relations with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain sank to a new low in March when the three governments withdrew their ambassadors from Doha, accusing it of meddling in their affairs and supporting the Brotherhood — designated as “terrorist” by Riyadh.

UK - One of the greatest crimes in history is happening right now. Yet it is something almost nobody will discuss. No European capital has been brought to a standstill by a march expressing outrage. There are few calls for war-crimes trials of the perpetrators. The crime is the wholesale eradication of Christianity from the continent that gave it birth.

EUROPE - Mario Draghi, the European Central Bank president, has opened the door for member states to ease back on austerity to reduce unemployment and revive flagging economic growth in the region. “The long-term cohesion of the euro area depends on each country in the union achieving a sustainably high level of employment,” Mr Draghi said in a speech delivered at the global central bankers meeting in Jackson Hole. “And given the very high costs if the cohesion of the union is threatened, all countries should have an interest in achieving this.” Mr Draghi suggested that countries in Europe should be encouraged to increase spending within the existing rules designed to reduce deficits and rein in debt in order to boost economic reform and create more jobs.

EUROPE - Just a few months ago the euro zone’s leaders believed that, having weathered the storm, they were set fair at last. It was an illusion. In recent weeks the countries of the euro zone have begun to take in water once again. Their collective GDP stagnated in the second quarter: Italy fell back into outright recession, French GDP was flat and even mighty Germany saw an unexpectedly large fall in output.

GERMANY - Engineering company Trumpf is so proud of its machine tools that it displays them in a high-tech exhibition hall at its headquarters in southern Germany. The laser-cutting rig, the punching machine, and the state-of-the art combined laser-cutter and puncher mesmerise visitors with their unerring precision – turning out anything from jewellery to car door parts. Steel sheet is transformed into components in seconds. All would seem to be well with this family-owned business, which posted annual sales in the year to June of €2.6 billion, the highest in its 90-year history. But the Ukraine crisis is darkening even Trumpf’s horizon. Caution is spreading across Germany, driven by the worsening conflict in eastern Europe and the recent imposition of EU sector-wide economic sanctions on Russia, which are compounding domestic problems. As Joe Kaeser, chief executive of Siemens, says, geopolitical tensions now pose “serious risks” for Europe’s growth this year and next.

GERMANY - Germany's intelligence head said Sunday that his state, like the UK, France and other western nations, faces a very high danger of citizens returning to conduct terror attacks from Syria and Iraq, where they are fighting in the ranks of the extremist Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS). An example of German propaganda was seen as early as last November, when a German Muslim convert in Syria fighting for ISIS released a video in German calling for his countrymen to join in jihad. The intel chief added "the Islamic State is, so to speak, the 'in' thing - much more attractive than the Nusra Front, the Al Qaeda spin-off in Syria. What attracts people is the intense brutality, the radicalism and rigor. That suggests to them that it is a more authentic organization even than Al Qaeda," said Maassen. "Al Qaeda fades besides the Islamic State when it comes to brutality."

USA - The speech by former US Vice-President Al Gore was apocalyptic. ‘The North Polar ice cap is falling off a cliff,’ he said. ‘It could be completely gone in summer in as little as seven years. Seven years from now.’ Those comments came in 2007 as Mr Gore accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaigning on climate change. But seven years after his warning, The Mail on Sunday can reveal that, far from vanishing, the Arctic ice cap has expanded for the second year in succession – with a surge, depending on how you measure it, of between 43 and 63 per cent since 2012. To put it another way, an area the size of Alaska, America’s biggest state, was open water two years ago, but is again now covered by ice. Crucially, the ice is also thicker, and therefore more resilient to future melting.

UK - A culture of Left-wing political correctness led politicians and officials to ignore the plight of young girls who were being sexually abused by Asian men, Labour figures have warned. Ann Cryer, an MP from 1997 until 2010, told The Sunday Telegraph how she had feared being called “racist” when, in 2002, she exposed a sex-abuse scandal involving Pakistani men in her constituency of Keighley, West Yorkshire. A “politically correct Left just saw it as racism”, she said. At the same time, Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP for Rochdale, revealed that even now some of his colleagues disapproved of his efforts to uncover child abuse, because some were “obsessing about multiculturalism”.

UK - Political correctness is a vile, perverted ideology which is wrecking our society and ruining the lives of the innocent. That is the only conclusion that can be drawn from the shocking child abuse scandal in Rotherham. Yesterday an official report from Professor Alexis Jay, the former chief inspector of social work in Scotland, revealed that no fewer than 1,400 girls in the area, some of them as young as 11, had been systematically targeted, raped and assaulted over a 16-year period.

WEST AFRICA - WFP's West Africa Director Denise Brown said the organisation was currently providing food for around 150,000 people in Ebola-striken nations but needed to rapidly scale that up as the worst ever epidemic of the virus advanced. Senegal on Friday became the fifth country to confirm it had been touched by the outbreak that has infected more than 3,000 people - killing some 1,550 of them - since it was detected in March. The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday the outbreak could infect a total of 20,000 people before it ends.