ISRAEL - Israel would not survive as a nation if it had to lay down its weapons, the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, has insisted. He said that while the British Jewish community was “filled with pain” over the loss of life in Gaza, Israel was “understandably and justifiably” defending itself from Hamas rocket attacks.

IRAQ - ISIS has been slowed for the moment. But local fighters in Iraq say if they’re going to continue to battle ISIS, they’ll need drones and advanced weapons to do it. American airpower and Kurdish troops have been able to blunt the advance of ISIS in northern Iraq — for now. But if they’re going to continue to survive the ISIS onslaught, the Kurdish government says, they’re going to need surveillance drones and other advanced weapons from the US.

IRAQ - Last week, tens of thousands of Yazidis fled from the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar into nearby mountains, escaping violence from the Sunni militant group that calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. Their plight — stranded, and dying of hunger and thirst — prompted the United States to conduct airstrikes against ISIS, in the first major US military push in Iraq since 2011. Suddenly, international attention has turned to this tiny faith group, whose estimated population ranges from 300,000 worldwide to 700,000 in northern Iraq alone.

USA - Mr Obama said Islamist fighters had been stopped from massacring tens of thousands of Yazidis by missile strikes and humanitarian aid drops. He said the US and UK had led a joint mission to provide emergency aid to the trapped refugees, while missile strikes checked the sweeping advance of ISIS militants. Mr Obama said terrorists were ‘killing and enslaving Yazidi civilians in their custody and laying siege’ to Mount Sinjar. He said: ‘Without food or water they faced a terrible choice – starve on the mountain or be slaughtered on the ground. That’s when America came to help.’ But he said: ‘We broke the ISIL siege of Mount Sinjar. We helped vulnerable people reach safety and we helped save many innocent lives.’ It came after Downing Street said the situation had improved so much that further aid drops may not be necessary. The announcement came just 24 hours after David Cameron revealed the Government was working on plans for a dramatic international rescue mission to save the trapped refugees.

SAUDI ARABIA - Saudi Arabia donated $100 million Wednesday to a UN body established to coordinate and assist international counter-terrorism efforts and called on other nations to match its support. “The goal is to help provide the tools, technologies and methods to confront and eliminate the threat of terrorism,” Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, said in presenting a check to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. Saudi King Abdullah provided seed money to establish the UN Counter¬terrorism Center in 2011. Since then, the center has held conferences and issued papers but has had little direct impact on the ground.

CENTRAL AMERICA - Low rainfall linked to the El Nino weather phenomenon has led to drought in parts of Central America, causing widespread damage to crops, shortages and rising prices of food, and worsening hunger among the region’s poor. An unusually hot season and extended dry spells have brought drought to areas in eastern and western Guatemala and El Salvador, southern Honduras and northern and central Nicaragua, destroying swathes of bean and maize crops, the region’s staple foods, and putting pressure on subsistence farmers and food prices.

BRAZIL - A severe drought affecting Brazil’s biggest city has led to a “water war” that could cause the water supply to collapse in parts of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Authorities in São Paulo have been battling a water crisis for months as reservoirs run dry for lack of rainfall. The dispute over resources has caused conflict between the state governments in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Reports suggested the row could end up in the hands of the president, Dilma Rousseff. Residents in Rio state have reportedly already been affected with shortages that coincided with the temporary reduction in water flow at the dam. Local authorities said families in Barra do Piraí were finding their taps dry for 12 hours a day.

USA - Fresh off a trip to India and Australia, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel addressed a group of Marines in San Diego, California on Tuesday, and may have delivered a line that will show up in Republican campaign ads this election cycle. After updating the troops on some issues in the Pacific region and the Middle East, Hagel took questions from some of the Marines and gave a stark assessment of the global security situation: "The world is exploding all over."

USA - A senior White House advisor announced on Wednesday that United States President Barack Obama may soon send ground troops to Iraq in order to try to rescue tens of thousands of displaced Yezidis trapped on a mountain there. Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser for the Obama administration, said during a press conference early Wednesday that the White House is considering further options regarding the crisis in Iraq, where militants with the Islamic State, formerly ISIS, have forced waves of religious Yezidis to take refuge on Sinjar mountain in northern Iraq.

SAO PAULO, BRAZIL - Brazil's biggest city is running out of water and options. The worst drought to hit the Sao Paulo region in 84 years is forcing local authorities for the second time in a year to put water pumps below the gates of the main reservoir, where the level has dropped sharply, so water can flow to the city's 9 million people. Federal prosecutors are also demanding that state officials immediately present a plan for water rationing, warning that otherwise the reservoir could go dry. At Jaguari dam, one of the basins of the Cantareira System, cracks are spreading in the mud, scaring longtime residents who say they haven't experienced a water shortage like this in a long time. The region got only a third of the usual rain during Brazil's wet season from December to February.

IRAQ - After seizing five oil fields and Iraq's biggest dam, Sunni militants bent on creating an Islamic empire in the Middle East now control yet another powerful economic weapon – wheat supplies. Fighters from the Islamic State have overrun large areas in five of Iraq's most fertile provinces, where the United Nations food agency says around 40 percent of its wheat is grown. Now they're helping themselves to grain stored in government silos, milling it and distributing the flour on the local market, an Iraqi official told Reuters. The Islamic State has even tried to sell smuggled wheat back to the government to finance a war effort marked by extreme violence and brutality.

MIDDLE EAST - Israel and the Palestinians have begun a fresh five-day ceasefire in Gaza, agreed at the end of a three-day truce. As the ceasefire was announced, Israel launched air strikes in response to alleged rocket fire from Gaza. There were no more reports of violence overnight, and the two sides were expected to continue indirect talks mediated by Egypt in Cairo. The Israelis launched a military operation in Gaza on 8 July to stop militant attacks from Gaza. Palestinian sources say the truce extension will create a window for further negotiations. But the BBC's Kevin Connolly in Gaza says future talks are likely to be forbiddingly difficult. Officials from both sides have been communicating their demands through Egyptian intermediaries in Cairo.

VATICAN - Exactly 17 months after his election in Rome as leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, Pope Francis is shifting gear and turning his attention to Asia. This week, he begins the first of three - and perhaps four - long-distance trips to encourage his flock in the continent that presents the Catholic Church with its greatest missionary challenge in the 21st century. Although only 3% of the world's Catholics live in the planet's most populous continent, more have been baptised in Asia this year than in Europe, according to Vatican statistics.

MISSOURI, USA - Police in riot gear fired tear gas into a crowd of protesters in a St Louis suburb where an unarmed black teenager had been fatally shot by police over the weekend, as tension rose even amid calls for collective calm. Between two nights of unrest, a community forum hosted by the local NAACP chapter Monday night drew hundreds to a sweltering church in Ferguson, the nearly 70 percent black St Louis County suburb where an unarmed 18-year-old, Michael Brown, was shot multiple times by a police officer.

GERMANY - Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen has announced that Germany will support Iraq's army in its efforts to fight the "Islamic State" (IS) terror group by delivering nonlethal military aid such as armored vehicles, helmets, night-vision equipment, booby-trap detectors and medical supplies. The announcement came after a meeting with her British counterpart, Michael Fallon, in Berlin on Tuesday. When asked whether Germany might deliver weapons to Iraq, von der Leyen said that only nonlethal options were on the table for now. "If it is a question of preventing genocide, it is our duty to intensively discuss what can be done," the defense minister was quoted by the German news agency dpa as saying.