CHICAGO, USA - The first radio links with pilots were lost just as the pre-dawn crush of flights into Chicago began. Air-traffic controllers in a nondescript Federal Aviation Administration building about 40 miles from the city switched to backup channels. Then those failed. They tried emergency connections, which also went dead. Within minutes, radar feeds, flight plans and other data controllers rely on to direct more than 6,000 aircraft a day above five US states had vanished as a fire was being set in a communications room one floor below. The attack was thorough and carried out by someone who knew the system intimately - down to removing steel sheathing on data cables to destroy them, according to three people with knowledge of the incident. The September 26 outage, blamed on a suicidal communications technician, was the worst case of sabotage in the history of the nation’s air-traffic control system.

IRAQ - Islamic State (ISIS) fighters are only a mile away from Baghdad, according to a spokesman for the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East. Battles between ISIS and Iraqi forces have also been raging in the strategic city of Amiriyat al-Fallujah, 25 miles west of Baghdad. Battles on both fronts have been calmed over the past several days, and Iraqi bombing and ground forces have been successful in keeping the ISIS forces from entering the capital. The threat on Baghdad is still very real, however. "They said it could never happen and now it almost has," a spokesman for a Christian aid group said in an interview. "Obama says he overestimated what the Iraqi Army could do. Well, you only need to be here a very short while to know they can do very, very little."

UK - A Conservative minister has been forced to apologize after retweeting a poem that said Ed Miliband’s Labour Party is “full of queers,” leading outraged MPs to demand his resignation. Business Minister Matt Hancock said he was “incredibly sorry” after he retweeted the offensive poem, which claimed Labour had been rejected by its traditional support base because of its prominent homosexual members. The tweet, which Hancock quickly deleted, read: “The party run by young Ed is quietly going quite dead. Bereft of ideas, quite full of queers, no wonder the faithful have fled." Homosexual Labour MP Chris Bryant called the comment “vile” and said Hancock should be sacked.

MECCA, SAUDI ARABIA - A New York Times op-ed today details a conflict within Islam that will resonate with anyone whose hometown has ever been the site of backlash against new construction and sprawl, which is to say, pretty much everyone in the United States who doesn't live in Las Vegas. The piece by Ziauddin Sardar describes a version of the familiar preservationists versus developers debate taking place in one of the highest-stakes locations imaginable — namely, Mecca, a place so important to hundreds of millions of people that its name is a synonym for "a place that is important to people." Writes Sardar: Pilgrims performing the hajj this week will search in vain for Mecca’s history.

USA - The first Ebola patient diagnosed in the US initially went to a Dallas emergency room last week but was sent home, even after telling a nurse that he had been in disease-ravaged West Africa, the hospital acknowledged Wednesday. The decision by Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital to release him could have put many others at risk of exposure to the disease before he went back to the ER two days later, after his condition worsened. Thomas Eric Duncan explained to a nurse Friday that he was visiting the US from Liberia, but that information was not widely shared, said Dr Mark Lester, who works for the hospital's parent company. Duncan's answer "was not fully communicated" throughout the hospital's medical team, Lester said. Instead, the patient was sent home with antibiotics, according to his sister, Mai Wureh, who identified her brother as the infected man in an interview with The Associated Press.

USA - Health experts were observing up to 18 people, including children, who had contact with the first person to be diagnosed with the deadly Ebola virus in the United States, officials said on Wednesday. Confirmation that a man who flew to Texas from Liberia later fell ill with the hemorrhagic fever prompted US health officials to take steps to contain the virus, which has killed at least 3,338 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the World Health Organization said. The patient was evaluated initially last Friday and sent home from Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital with antibiotics, a critical missed opportunity that could result in others being exposed to the virus, infectious disease experts said.

USA - US stocks dropped more than 1 percent on Wednesday as the first diagnosis of Ebola in a patient in the United States spooked investors, economic data pointed to uneven growth, and the Russell 2000 index entered correction territory. The Ebola news pressured shares of airlines and other transportation names, with the NYSE ARCA Airline index .XAL falling 3.1 percent, the biggest percentage decline since January. The Dow Jones transportation average .DJT dropped 2.5 percent, its biggest daily percentage drop since February. Shares of drugmakers with Ebola treatments in the pipeline were up sharply. US shares of Tekmira Pharmaceuticals (TKMR.O) climbed 18.2 percent.

UK - Ebola is a viral illness of which the initial symptoms can include a sudden fever, intense weakness, muscle pain and a sore throat, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). And that is just the beginning: subsequent stages are vomiting, diarrhoea and - in some cases - both internal and external bleeding.

USA - The so-called prepper community has a long list of concerns — and for quite some time Ebola has been near the top of it. Experts, though, are split on whether the confirmation that the disease has entered the US will spur a rush in equipment sales. Even as awareness of doomsdayers grows thanks to a reality series on the National Geographic Channel, sales of supplies like canned food and hand-cranked flashlights had actually begun to level off before Tuesday. And since Ebola has been on the community's radar for so long, many people have already stocked up. Others who have been aware of the need but who have not yet made the purchases will very likely be on Amazon, ordering the necessary supplies, just in case this does turn into a pandemic.

UK - The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant could acquire nuclear weapons if they are allowed to consolidate their hold in Iraq and Syria, Theresa May has warned. Isil could get hold of “chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons” in the “world’s first truly terrorist state,” the Home Secretary said, in a wide-ranging speech to the Conservative party conference. The Home Secretary dramatically highlighted the threat to Britain from the terrorist group, which is operating “within a few hours flying time of our country”. Isil are using their new territory to train men and women, she said, while devising “new methods to kill indiscriminately”.

JAPAN - Share orders worth several billions of dollars were cancelled in Japan due to a trading error. At 9:25 am local time, orders for shares in 42 companies totalling 67.78 trillion yen ($617 billion, £380 billion, €488 billion) were cancelled, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from the Japan Securities Dealers Association. The stock orders amount to more than the size of Sweden's economy. Off-exchange or over-the-counter trades are conducted directly between two parties without supervision of the stock exchange. "It's not rocket science that there was a fat finger here, but it reopens the question about accountability," Gavin Parry, managing director at Hong Kong-based brokerage Parry International Trading, told Bloomberg. The trading errors commonly known as 'fat finger' is not new to Japan. In 2009, UBS mistakenly ordered 3 trillion yen worth of convertible bonds in Capcom.

USA - The first case of the deadly Ebola virus diagnosed on US soil has been confirmed in Dallas, Texas. Officials at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital say the unidentified patient is being kept in isolation. The man is thought to have contracted the virus in Liberia before travelling to the US nearly two weeks ago. More than 3,000 people have already died of Ebola in West Africa and a small number of US aid workers have recovered after being flown to the US.

GERMANY - For months the German media and leading politicians have been calling for an end to Germany’s postwar policy of military restraint. Last week the campaign for militarism reached a new highpoint. During years of tight budget policy and cuts, any major increase in the defense budget was excluded. Now this demand has moved to the center of the media propaganda. The media campaign has been carefully prepared. Not a day goes past without a new “unexpected” revelation regarding the dilapidated state of the German army.

GERMANY - The European Court of Justice announced September 22 that hearings in the case against the European Central Bank's (ECB) bond-buying scheme known as Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) will begin October 14. Though the process is likely to be lengthy, with a judgment not due until mid-2015, the ruling will have serious implications for Germany's relationship with the rest of the eurozone. The timing could hardly be worse, coming as an anti-euro party has recently been making strides in the German political scene, steadily undermining the government's room for maneuver.

VATICAN - In a pre-Rosh Hashana meeting, Pope Francis and a World Jewish Congress delegation discussed the worrying international situation, including the persecution of Christians in the Middle East. The meeting took place in a “very intimate atmosphere,” Andras Heisler, president of the Hungarian Jewish umbrella organization Mazsihisz, told Hungarian media. He said Francis offered his best wishes for the New Year but also reiterated his statement made Saturday at a World War I memorial that today’s raging crises around the globe could represent a third world war, “one fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres, destruction.”