USA - Multiple local government agencies on Long Island declared states of emergency Wednesday after a storm dumped nearly an entire summer’s worth of rain, causing major flooding in some spots that stranded motorists and snarled the morning commute. From Tuesday evening until Wednesday morning, Islip got more than 13 inches of rain, more than the normal total for June, July and August of 11.75 inches, said Joe Pollina of the National Weather Service. A state of emergency was declared in Suffolk County, where County Executive Steve Bellone called the weather Wednesday morning a “storm of historic proportions.” “It was unprecedented and unpredicted — the size, the extent, the scale,” Bellone said at a news conference Wednesday, also remarking that “this could be a 500-year storm we just witnessed.”

GERMANY - Fears over escalating tit-for-tat tensions with Russia and weak European data sees German investors' expectations fall to lowest level in 20 months. German investor confidence has plunged to the lowest level since December 2012, amid renewed tensions over Ukraine. Jeremy Cook, of World First, said the news suggested that German growth would be negative in the second quarter of this year, and "not much better" in the third.

IRAQ - Thousands of people desperately trying to escape the bloody Islamic State militants have been left with little option but to head from one war zone to another as they advance on the Syrian border.

Displaced people from the minority Yazidi sect, most of them women and children, were seen today slowly walking in the agonising midday 45C sun towards the Syrian border town of Elierbeh of Al-Hasakah Governorate.

MIDDLE EAST - Even as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria fights to expand the territory under its control in the Middle East, statements from members of ISIS suggest the terror group views America as a future target. “Everywhere our camera went, there seemed to be a young man eager to extol the virtues of the newly formed caliphate,” VICE Media’s Medyan Dairieh narrated in part four of his video report from the ISIS-controlled Syrian city of Raqqa, which the terror group has proclaimed the capital of its newly declared Islamic caliphate. “I swear to Allah we will divide America in two,” one child, who looked no older than 12, declared to VICE Media in an angry rant, speaking as if he was already a member of the terror group. “And we’ll destroy the enemies of the religion all of them, all who fight the Islamic State.”

USA - Once-teeming Lake Mead marinas are idle as a 14-year drought steadily drops water levels to historic lows. Officials from nearby Las Vegas are pushing conservation but also are drilling a new pipeline to keep drawing water from the lake. Hundreds of miles away, farmers who receive water from the lake behind Hoover Dam are preparing for the worst.

GERMANY - Supporters of the jihadist group "Islamic State" [IS] have clashed with Kurdish Yazidis in North Rhine-Westphalia, the state with the largest Muslim population in Germany. The violence - which comes amid threats by a German jihadist to blow up an American nuclear weapons storage facility in Germany - has counter-terrorism officials concerned that radical Muslims are deliberately exploiting the ethnic and religious tensions in the Middle East to stir up trouble on the streets of Europe.

UK - It is increasingly clear that Britain’s army of borrowers are being lulled into a false sense of security. The cost of borrowing is actually falling, not rising, a remarkable and little-understood state of affairs which is storing up immense problems for the future. The consumer credit market is a ticking time bomb; it beggars belief that so many folk and companies who should know better are so relaxed about it. At some point, central banks, led by the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve, will start tightening monetary policy in earnest, and this is bound to eventually have a knock-on effect on the cost of consumer borrowing. When this does happen, the shock to borrowers, practical as well as psychological, will be immense.

USA - The Obama administration continues to come under pressure from lawmakers and the survivors and families of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, to release the findings of a secret report that may show that some members of the royal family of Saudi Arabia aided the hijackers 13 years ago.

IRAQ - Why is Obama now re-committing the US military to Iraq? Why is France strongly backing military action? Obama says it’s to protect minorities. That’s nothing new. Obama is the fourth president in a row to bomb Iraq … while claiming it is for humanitarian purposes. But the architects of the Iraq War (the one which started in 2003) themselves admitted it was about oil. But what about now? Why are the US and France deploying military force in Iraq now?

USA - The chemical triclosan has been linked to cancer-cell growth and disrupted development in animals. Regulators are reviewing whether it’s safe to put in soap, cutting boards and toys. Consumer companies are phasing it out. Minnesota voted in May to ban it in many products. At the same time, millions of Americans are putting it in their mouths every day, by way of a top-selling toothpaste that uses the antibacterial chemical to head off gum disease - Colgate-Palmolive Co’s Total.

UK - Wind farms were paid a record sum of almost £3 million in a single day this week not to produce electricity. Strong winds amid the remnants of Hurricane Bertha left the electricity network unable to cope with the amount of energy being produced by turbines on Monday. As a result National Grid paid owners £2.8 million to shut down their wind farms, at up to double the rate they would have received in subsidies had they actually generated electricity. A further £1.1 million was given to other power stations to generate electricity to make up the shortfall created by shutting the wind farms down. The money - detailed in figures provided by National Grid - will ultimately be added on to household bills and paid for by consumers.

EUROPE - The European Union has demanded that powers be stripped from the UK’s financial regulators and handed to Brussels, in a move that will put further pressure on the strained relationship between the City of London and Europe. The European Commission on Friday called for the EU’s three financial supervisors to play a greater role in regulating banks, insurers and markets, with new powers that will dilute the effectiveness of the Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England.

UK - Anger erupted today after the EU gifted billions in British taxpayers' money to help boost the French economy. France will get a colossal £22 billion handout, up to £2.8 billion of which will come from the UK. Most of the money will be spent on training and education in a bid to slash unemployment and revive France’s economic fortunes by the end of the decade. Critics warned it means British taxpayers’ will be effectively forking out up to £2.8 billion over the next seven years to help prop up one of the world’s biggest economies. It also serves as another embarrassment for deeply unpopular Socialist French President Francoise Hollande who has seen unemployment rocket to record levels – 3.4 million – under his watch. Growth has also stagnated. The French economy did not grow at all in the first three months of the year with some analysts dubbing it the “sick man” of Europe.

EUROPE - The European Central Bank is accelerating plans to unleash fresh growth-boosting measures as the eurozone's recovery loses steam and the risk increases of a geopolitical shock from the Ukraine crisis. Mario Draghi, president of the ECB, said that the Bank had "intensified preparatory work" on quantitative easing as a potential new weapon in its battle against deflation and economic stagnation. He revealed that the eurozone's policymakers were closer to using QE – which would inject cash into the eurozone by acquiring assets such as bonds from financial institutions – amid worrying signs that weak growth in the 18-member currency bloc is slowing further still.

UK - The “traditional rhythm” of cooking with the seasons is being lost because rising numbers of people fail to understand when particular fruit and vegetables should be eaten, according to research. Fewer than one-in-ten adults know when some of the UK’s best known produce is in season, it emerged. The study, by BBC Good Food Magazine, found that 90 per cent or more of those asked struggled to name the correct months when broad beans, blackberries or asparagus are in season. It was revealed that just four per cent of people could correctly say when plums were in season and only five per cent knew the three months blackberries were ripe for eating. Writing in the September issue of BBC Good Food Magazine investigative food journalist Joanna Blythman said: "The supermarkets' obsession with stocking every fruit and vegetable grown on the planet, every day of the year, makes it hard to detect the ebb and flow of seasonal produce."