NIGERIA - Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram could severely hinder efforts to contain the Ebola outbreak sweeping Nigeria, because they are opposed to Western medicine, a US diplomat warned last night. The concern follows a declaration of "national emergency" by President Goodluck Jonathan, who pledged £6.5 million to tackle the virus. The former US ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell, told the Sunday Express: "There is no doubt that, when it comes to northern Nigeria, Boko Haram will make it very difficult. Boko Haram is intrinsically opposed to Western science and to Western medicine. It does not even recognise the existence of germs or viruses, because they are not mentioned in the Koran."

UK - Boris Johnson will today declare Britain has ‘nothing to be afraid of’ in pulling out of Europe – putting him dramatically at odds with David Cameron. In his most powerful intervention yet on the European Union, the London Mayor says the UK would have a ‘great and glorious future’ if it set itself free from ‘job-destroying’ Brussels. He will argue that if the Prime Minister’s hopes of renegotiating our relationship with the EU fail, we should consider leaving altogether and forging trade relationships with the rest of the world. Describing EU-inspired red tape as ‘back-breaking’ and ‘grinding’, he will claim our economy could surge if it leaves behind such regulatory burdens and enters into its own relationships with growing economies such as China and Brazil. ‘We have nothing to be afraid of in going for an alternative future, a Britain open not just to the rest of Europe but to the world,’ he will say. ‘If we get it right it’s win-win.’

MIDDLE EAST - Lying among a pile of papers at the hideout in Pakistan where Osama Bin Laden was shot dead was a carefully worded 21-page letter. It warned of the rise of a new and ruthless group of Islamic extremists capable of such extreme brutality that Al Qaeda should sever all links with them. In fact, it claimed the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (or ISIS) had such complete disregard for civilian life that it could damage the reputation of Al Qaeda – if such a thing were possible for an organisation that has long traded in murderous terrorism. The document, written by one of Bin Laden’s senior officials in 2011, went on to catalogue some of its acts of barbarism – including the use of chlorine gas as a chemical weapon, bombing mosques and a massacre in a Catholic church in Baghdad. ISIS, now called Islamic State, has control of an area larger than Great Britain.

EUROPE - There is growing dissent in the EU over policies that led to a de facto trade war with Russia. Meanwhile the countries not toeing the line are reaping the benefits, irritating those who jumped on the sanctions bandwagon. Greek members of the European Parliament demanded Sunday that the EU cancel sanctions against Russia. MEPs Kostantinos Papadakis and Sotiris Zarianopoulos said in a letter to some senior EU officials that Russia’s ban on food import from the EU, which was Moscow’s response to anti-Russian sanctions, was ruinous to Greek agriculture. “Thousands of small- and middle-sized Greek farms producing fruit and vegetables and selling them primarily to the Russian market have been hit hard now as their unsold products are now rotting at warehouses,” the letter said.

MIDDLE EAST - Islamic State militants have directly threatened Turkey with violence as they swore to “liberate” Istanbul in order to reopen a dam on the Euphrates River. Water flow to parts of Syria and Iraq is at a record low. The apparent closure is especially unfavorable to the terrorist group, as its new ‘capital’ Raqqa, in northern Syria, is in that zone. This is creating a humanitarian catastrophe as water levels plummet in nearby Lake Assad. In a new Vice documentary episode on the IS militia, one member warns that if the Turkish government doesn’t open the Euphrates Dam back up, the group will do it for them by “liberating” Istanbul.

MIDDLE EAST - In an attempt to protect their secrets from being revealed to the Israeli security forces, Hamas has executed tens of Gazan tunnel diggers in the last few weeks. The mass execution is said to have taken place after attempts from Hamas to make sure that the excavators knew nothing of the locations in which they were digging. According to the Israeli website Mako, extreme precautions were used by Hamas.

MIDDLE EAST - The Foreign Press Association on Monday lodged a strong protest accusing the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas of harassment and of threatening foreign reporters working in Gaza. The association for journalists working in Israel and the Palestinian territories said Hamas authorities and their representatives employed "blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox methods" against visiting international journalists covering the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza. The FPA, in a statement, protested "in the strongest terms".

IRAQ - They arrived bristling with heavy weapons and waving black flags from about a dozen Humvees, seized from the Iraqi army and supplied originally by the United States. When the terrified residents looked out of their windows, they saw that Kosho, their traditional walled village in the mountains of northern Iraq, had been surrounded by jihadists. More than 200 bearded militants had besieged the village. Then their leader – a local man from Mosul rather than the foreigners who make up more than a third of the ranks of the group now known as Islamic State – offered them a chance to save their lives. ‘He told us that either we become Muslims or they would kill us all,’ said Falah, mayor of the village made up mainly of members of the ancient Yazidi sect. ‘We offered money but they would not accept it.’

MIDDLE EAST - US spy agencies have begun to see groups of fighters abandoning al-Qaeda affiliates in Yemen and Africa to join the rival Islamist organization that has seized territory in Iraq and Syria and been targeted in American airstrikes, US officials said. The movements are seen by US ­counterterrorism analysts as a worrisome indication of the expanding appeal of a group known as the Islamic State that has overwhelmed military forces in the region and may now see itself in direct conflict with the United States. “Small groups from a number of al-Qaeda affiliates have defected to ISIS,” as the group is also known, said a US official with access to classified intelligence assessments. “And this problem will probably become more acute as ISIS continues to rack up victories.”

GERMANY - Germany has reacted cautiously to Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman’s call for Berlin to lead an EU inspection mission to Gaza. As a 72-hour ceasefire between Israel and Hamas expires today, German officials confirmed that Berlin, Paris and London had proposed reactivating an EU mission on the Egyptian border to Gaza with the aim of stabilising the Palestinian enclave.

GERMANY - German bond yields plunged to a historic low and two-year rates briefly fell below zero on Thursday on fears of widening recession in the eurozone, and a flight to safety as Russian troops massed on the Ukrainian border. Yields on 10-year Bunds dropped to 1.06 percent after a blizzard of fresh data showed that recovery has stalled across most of the currency bloc, with even Germany now uncomfortably close to recession. Commerzbank warned that the German economy may have contracted by 0.2 percent in the second quarter and is far too weak to pull southern Europe out of the doldrums. The public debt ratio jumped from 130.2 percent to 135.6 percent of GDP in the first quarter from a year earlier and will now rise again, despite austerity measures and a primary budget surplus.

ISRAEL - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday night set out a moral justification for the way the IDF has dealt with the Hamas strategy of firing rockets at Israel, and tunneling under the Israeli border, from the heart of Palestinian residential neighborhoods in Gaza. Arguing that Israel’s battle over the past month against terrorists in Gaza using civilians as human shields came during a critical test period, he said it would be a “moral mistake” as well as a practical one to not take action against terrorists operating from mosques, schools and other civilian areas. Such behavior would represent “an enormous victory for terrorists everywhere,” he said, and would result in more and more civilian deaths around the world.

IRAQ - The US has conducted its second air-drop of food and water to thousands of Iraqis hiding in mountains from jihadist fighters, the Pentagon says. It came hours after the US launched fresh air strikes against militants from the Islamic State (IS). The group had recently made fresh gains in northern Iraq and is threatening the Kurdish city of Irbil. The US is also piling pressure on Iraqi leaders to form a unity government capable of dealing with the jihadists. IS, a jihadist group formerly known as Isis, has taken control of swathes of Iraq and Syria and has also seized Iraq's largest dam. IS remained defiant. One fighter told Reuters that the strikes would have "no impact on us". "The planes attack positions they think are strategic but this is not how we operate. We are trained for guerrilla street war," he said.

USA - The head of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Friday said the extremist group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS or ISIL) must be confronted forcefully by the US, though she stopped short of calling for boots on the ground. “It takes an army to defeat an army, and I believe that we either confront ISIL now or we will be forced to deal with an even stronger enemy in the future,” Senator Dianne Feinstein (Democrat for California) said in a statement. The group is “operating with military expertise, advancing across Iraq and rapidly consolidating its position,” she added. “Inaction is no longer an option,” according to Feinstein. The senior lawmaker also said it had “become clear” that the group is recruiting and training fighters from Western countries and possibly sending them back to cities in the US and Europe in order to “attack us in our backyard.” “We simply cannot allow this to happen,” Feinstein warned.

MIDDLE EAST - The terror group President Barack Obama threatened to strike in Iraq Thursday evening is itself threatening to strike the American homeland. “I say to America that the Islamic Caliphate has been established,” Abu Mosa, a spokesman for the terror group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), told VICE Media in a video interview posted online Thursday. “Don’t be cowards and attack us with drones. Instead send your soldiers, the ones we humiliated in Iraq.” “We will humiliate them everywhere, God willing, and we will raise the flag of Allah in the White House,” he added. The video is the first of a multipart series on ISIS VICE Media says it plans to release. VICE Media reporter Medyan Dairieh recently spent three weeks in the ISIS-controlled Syrian city of Raqqa, which the terror group has proclaimed the capital of its newly declared Islamic caliphate.