CHINA - China began deploying 700 soldiers to a United Nations peacekeeping force in South Sudan to help guard the country's embattled oil fields and protect Chinese workers and installations, a spokesman for the African nation's president said Tuesday. The airlift of the Chinese infantry battalion to the South Sudanese states of Unity and Upper Nile, the site of the only operating oil fields still under control of the central government in Juba, was expected to take several days, spokesman Ateny Wek Ateny said. While Beijing's troops will operate under UN command, their posting to South Sudan marks a sharp escalation of China's efforts to ensure the safety of its workers and assets in Africa, and guarantee a steady flow of energy for domestic consumption. The deployment marks the first time Beijing has contributed a battalion to a UN peacekeeping force, UN officials said.

MEXICO - Gaze across Lake Cajititlán here in western Mexico and normally you’ll see fisherman cutting their nets and tourist boats gliding over the blue-green water. But that picturesque scene turned grim last week when more than 4 million dead fish suddenly surfaced, turning the water a sinister shade of gray. It’s still unclear what killed the fish, but the incident was the worst in a spate of environmental disasters in Mexico this year. Early last month, a river in the northern state of Sonora took on a sickly brown-red color after workers from a nearby mine dumped thousands of gallons of sulfuric acid into the water. In Veracruz state, near the Gulf of Mexico, a gasoline spill contaminated almost 5 miles of a small river near the town of Tierra Blanca. What ties them together, critics say, are lax environmental standards, a complete lack of industry oversight and an inability to penalize people and companies that pollute.

USA - Washington has spent nearly $3 million (£1.82 million) studying lesbian obesity to find out why they are among the hardest hit. The study being carried out by the National Institute of Health, now in its fourth year, has another two to run. It comes after official data released earlier this year showed 69 per cent of American adults over 20 are classified as overweight or obese. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, nearly three quarters of America’s lesbian population falls into one or other of these categories – compared with half of the heterosexual female population.

MEXICO - Mired in the drought that has dried up so much of the Southwest, Texas is losing patience with Mexico, which owes the state millions of gallons of water. Under the terms of a 1945 agreement, Mexico and Texas are supposed to send each other a certain amount of water. Texas’ share comes from the Colorado River, while Mexico’s originates along the Rio Grande.

EUROPE - European Union judges have ruled that parody is not acceptable when it goes beyond "an expression of humour or mockery" and contains a "discriminatory message". EU courts, not known for a sense of humour, have made a judgement under European copyright law after a far-Right Belgian party used a parody of cult comic characters to make a political point about immigration. "If a parody conveys a discriminatory message, a person holding rights in the parodied work may demand that that work should not be associated with that message," said the European Court of Justice. Paul Nuttall, the deputy leader of Ukip, accused the EU judges of self-parody. "Can they not see in this judgement , great material for a parody themselves? Judges don't normally make good comedians but some of the judgements out of the ECJ actually do make people laugh," he said.

UK - Alex Salmond’s biggest lie, that an independent Scotland could float onward and upward on the strength its oil and gas resources, has finally been nailed. The greatest authority on Scottish oil, Sir Ian Wood – together with the bosses of BP and Shell – has exposed it as pure fantasy. Wood, founder of Scotland’s world-leading oil services firm Wood Group, has accused the Scottish Nationalists of misleading voters with ‘highly inaccurate forecasts, false promises and misleading information’. His intervention, along with that of Bob Dudley of BP and Ben van Beurden of Shell, delivers a devastating blow to claims being made by Salmond and his acolytes that North Sea oil, augmented by unexploited opportunities using relatively new ‘fracking’ techniques, could turn Scotland into the next Norway.

UK - Hundreds of thousands of Scottish home owners could see their mortgage repayments increasing far beyond their wages if an independent Scotland is forced to adopt a foreign currency. Mortgage experts have warned that lenders may refuse to switch current loans to a new currency and will instead keep them in sterling. This would leave Scotland's 800,000 home owners at the mercy of currency fluctuations that could lead to higher repayments and even negative equity on their homes. Ray Boulger, a mortgage expert at the mortgage adviser John Charcol, said that lenders did not have clauses in their terms and conditions that would allow them to change the currency of existing loans. If the pound strengthened against the new Scottish currency, borrowers' wages would not stretch as far, sending their repayments shooting up and increasing the mortgage relative to the property's value.

UK - Standard Life, the pensions and insurance giant, has said it is planning to shift large parts of its business to England in the event of a "Yes" vote in this week's Scottish referendum. The Edinburgh-based FTSE 100 company said that "if there was a need to do so", it would make drastic changes to its business structure to cope with Scotland seceding. "This transfer of our business could potentially include pensions, investments and other long-term savings," the company said. The statement is the biggest confirmation yet that major Scottish companies are preparing for a shift south if Scotland votes to secede. Standard Life was the first FTSE 100 company based north of the border to warn of the risks of independence back in February.

UK - Some of the UK's biggest banks will have once-in-a-lifetime decisions to make about their future if Scotland votes in favour of independence this week. One of the key issues worrying the corporate world is the effect of Scottish independence on the banking sector. Share prices in banks most exposed to Scotland have taken a major hit as a "Yes" vote becomes a real possibility, with a clear divide between Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds and TSB, and Barclays and HSBC. While Barclays and HSBC are barely exposed to Scotland, the three others are either based north of the border or do a great deal of business there.

UK - Investors are bracing themselves for a potentially "horrific" slide in the value of the pound should Scotland vote for independence… The pound slipped to a fresh ten-month low on Wednesday as concerns that Scots could vote to break up the UK intensified. Sterling slid as low as $1.6051 on Wednesday morning, dipping below the levels set on Monday and Tuesday as investors continue to digest the possibility that Scots will vote to break away from the rest of the UK. Volatility also edged up having already surged in the last week, signalling intense jitters among investors over the fate of the union. Jeremy Cook, chief economist at currency exchange company World First warned that the implications of a Yes vote "could be horrific".

UK - The former Tory Prime Minister questions whether voters have realised what a Yes vote would mean for the currency, their relations with the rest of the UK and their public finances. Scots have not thought through the implications of independence, Sir John Major said on Wednesday as he warned they will become ‘foreigners overnight”. The former Tory Prime Minister described as unprecedented “incompetence” a situation where the Scots do not know what currency they would end up with if they voted Yes. Although there have been repeated warnings from UK ministers and Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, he suggested that some voters will be going to the polls without realising “all the implications” of separation.

VATICAN - A "piecemeal" World War III may have already begun with the current spate of crimes, massacres and destruction, Pope Francis has warned. He was speaking during a visit to Italy's largest military cemetery, where he was commemorating the centenary of World War I. "War is madness," the Pope said at a memorial to 100,000 Italian soldiers at Redipuglia cemetery near Slovenia.

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - At the 15th annual Archaeology Conference, organized by Megalim – The City of David’s Institute for Jerusalem Studies, the central theme will be the “Jerusalem of Gold” exhibit, highlighting the history of ancient Jerusalem through her golden antiquities. “Never before have such valuable objects from the past been displayed before the public,” said Ahron Horovitz, Director of Megalim. “It is the opportunity for every individual to experience the authenticity of Jerusalem's history in its most tangible form.”

EUROPE - The tit-for-tat sanction madness in Europe took a huge leap forward today with new sanctions in the work on Russian energy companies. Russia responded by threatening to restrict commercial flights over its airspace and by threatening to halt reverse flows of natural gas to Ukraine. Moscow is seeking to prevent its European customers re-exporting Russian gas to Ukraine, threatening to choke off a crucial lifeline for Kiev and deepen the energy crunch it faces this winter. Why EU and US economic-jackasses think sanctions will accomplish anything positive or change Russia's behavior one bit is at first glance a bit of a mystery. However, economic-jackasses by definition are going to do stupid things, so we should expect more and more of the same failed tactics.

SIBERIA - Spiritual leaders from different corners of the globe gathered for the 'Call of 13 Shamans', a four-day festival held near the village of Khorum-Dag in the Tyva Republic. It is the centre point of the Asian continent and an area that is said to have high spiritual 'charge'. The timing of the event had been chosen to match natural cosmic cycles. The group of shamans, who travelled from countries including Mexico, Mongolia, Greenland, Russia and Korea, began by trekking to isolated locations for three days of meditation before performing a number of ceremonies - many of which originated in prehistory. They then slaughtered animals as a sacrifice before throat-singing, dancing and playing drums in different areas of the mountainous region.