GERMANY - While Hamas shoots Iranian-supplied missiles at civilians deep in the heart of Israel, Germany is pushing for increased economic engagement with Iran. The German Near and Middle East Association, or NUMOV, as it is known by its German acronym, backed by high level German businessmen and politicians, is planning a trade mission to Iran in December. With Iran’s continued nuclear activities, its human rights abuses, and its current missile support for Hamas during its attacks on Israel, Jewish and human rights activists are furious.

IRAN - Tehran will "accelerate" arming Palestinians in the occupied West Bank in retaliation for Israel deploying a spy drone over Iran, which was shot down, a military commander said on Monday. "We will accelerate the arming of the West Bank and we reserve the right to give any response," said General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, commander of aerial forces of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, in a statement on their official website sepahnews.com. The warning comes a day after the Guards said they had brought down an Israeli stealth drone above the Natanz uranium enrichment site in the centre of the country.

LIBYA - An alliance of Islamist militias said it wrested control of Tripoli’s international airport from a rival force after weeks of fighting that triggered an exodus of foreigners and threatened to plunge Libya deeper into chaos. Libya’s defunct, Islamist-dominated parliament said it would temporarily resume its sessions, the state-run Libya News Agency reported, a move that may set the stage for dueling legislatures amid a leadership vacuum. The fighting has battered Libya, undercut efforts to revive oil output in the OPEC member and dimmed hopes for a transition to democracy. It has sparked concern the nation, led by a largely toothless central government, will descend into anarchy and emerge as little more than a failed state controlled by militias.

EUROPE - NATO officials are considering deploying a long-planned missile defense system - aimed at protecting Europe from attacks from the Middle East - against Russia as well, SPIEGEL has learned. Calls for such an expansion to the system's remit, which is backed by the United States, are growing in Poland as well as in NATO member states Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. In the run-up to next week's NATO summit, the four countries called for the remaining members to agree on language at the summit that would pave the way for the plan. They feel threatened by Russia's intervention in Ukraine. But the majority of NATO members, especially Germany, are opposed to the proposal, warning that it could result in an unnecessary provocation of Moscow.

NIGERIA- Boko Haram's leader said a town in the north east of Nigeria seized by the insurgents earlier this month has been placed under an Islamic caliphate, in a video obtained by AFP on Sunday. "Thanks be to Allah who gave victory to our brethren in (the town of) Gwoza and made it part of the Islamic caliphate," Abubakar Shekau said in the 52-minute video. The military however rejected the claim, saying in a statement the "sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Nigerian state is still intact". In a July video, Shekau voiced support for the leader of the Islamic State and the Levant (Isil) militant Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who in late June declared himself "the caliph" and "leader of Muslims everywhere".

MIDDLE EAST - The video of James Foley’s execution may have been staged, with the actual murder taking place off-camera, it has emerged. Forensic analysis of the footage of the journalist’s death has suggested that the British jihadist in the film may have been the frontman rather than the killer. The clip, which apparently depicts Mr Foley’s brutal beheading, has been widely seen as a propaganda coup for Islamic State miltant group. But a study of the four-minute 40-second clip, carried out by an international forensic science company which has worked for police forces across Britain, suggested camera trickery and slick post-production techniques appear to have been used.

USA - North Bay residents who were shaken by Sunday morning’s South Napa Earthquake haven’t been given much of a chance to settle down, based on United States Geological Survey measurements of seismic activity in the area. In just over 24 hours following the 3:20 a.m Sunday earthquake the USGS recorded 124 minor quakes and counting in the area. The seismic activity is clustered around the epicenter and to the north near the Geysers, a region known for regular ground shaking. The largest of the tremors was 3.6 magnitude, just hours after the initial earthquake. Seismologists believed there was a 5-percent chance of an even larger quake over magnitude 6.0 in the next few days.

USA - A strong earthquake that jolted residents of California's Napa Valley wine country from their beds on Sunday caused insured property damage likely in the hundreds of millions of dollars, but the region's total economic losses will be several times that, experts said on Monday.

USA - Government officials and community groups say hundreds of rural San Joaquin Valley residents no longer can get drinking water from their home faucets because California’s extreme drought has dried up their individual wells. The situation has become so dire that the Tulare County Office of Emergency Services had 12-gallon-per person rations of bottled water delivered on Friday in the community of East Porterville, where at least 182 of the 1,400 households reported having no or not enough water. The office’s manager, Andrew Lockman, says the supplies cost the county $30,000 and were designed to last about three weeks, but are only a temporary fix. To get future deliveries, officials are asking low-income residents to apply for aid and for bottled water donations like the one a local casino made a few weeks ago.

USA - A Bay Area company is being urged to fix its state of the art solar plant, after thousands of birds flying by the plant are being burned to death. Workers at a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert have a name for birds that fly through the plant’s concentrated sun rays — “streamers,” for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair. Federal wildlife investigators who visited the BrightSource Energy plant last year and watched as birds burned and fell, reporting an average of one “streamer” every two minutes, are urging California officials to halt the operator’s application to build a still-bigger version. “Birds are bursting into flames, having their feathers singed, by the intense heat generated at that solar plant,” Garrison Frost of Audubon California told KPIX 5.

TURKEY - The mistake Western leaders make, is trying to hold out for Turkey the prospect of EU membership in exchange for Turkey getting involved in Syria and other places. Already we see that Turkey, whose Sunni Muslim population is moderate, is providing hospital treatment to ISIS fighters who supposedly want to recreate a new Caliphate.

GERMANY - From Kosovo to Afghanistan, German military deployments overseas have been the subject of much discussion. An unthinkable concept after World War Two, sending German soldiers to foreign lands evolved into a reality. The redevelopment of the German military after the end of the Nazi regime began in 1955/56, after the federal republic joined NATO. At the time, the return to arms was a highly controversial decision. Germany is currently debating the planned delivery of arms to the Iraqi army and Kurds in Iraq. The German government wants to support Kurds in their battle against the "IS" terrorists. Some politicians and observers regard sending weapons into an ongoing conflict zone as a taboo and the government's decision as a break with long-standing German foreign policy. Many ask whether parliamentary approval should be necessary before providing arms is permitted as it is before Bundeswehr troops can be deployed.

USA - We live in an era when politics keeps crashing into the world of economics. Good economic news contrasts starkly with the grim drumbeat of war in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Yet for a while, it appeared that markets were taking all of this in their strides, at least partly because even the crisis-hit areas made up a relatively small percentage of global GDP. Though in the case of Russia, Europe relies heavily on its energy supplies, so markets are finally starting to be affected.

INDIA - The fourth BRICS summit representing Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa was held on March 28-29, 2012 in New Delhi. Despite the limited timeline, its results might be defined as outstanding. In any case it’s obvious that the leaders of the member countries had no intention to confine themselves to purely symbolic resolutions, so the outcomes of the event look very impressive.

RUSSIA/CHINA - A lot has been written about a supposed Russian-Chinese rivalry in Central Asia, but in actuality, this is not the case, and it is nothing more than wishful thinking by those intending to split up the RCSP and see Russia and China butting heads over the region. Russia is in the process of politically and economically integrating with Kazakhstan and soon Kyrgyzstan under the auspices of the Eurasian Union, and it has mutual security commitments with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan (which also regularly partake in military drills).