MIDDLE EAST - The latest mini-war between Israel and the Islamist group Hamas began with the Gaza-based militants eager to strike a blow, but the escalation that followed has left them physically and diplomatically exposed, with no ready way out. Hamas has sent its rockets streaking into Israel after a month of army raids in the occupied West Bank - in search of three missing Israeli teenagers - that landed more than 900 Palestinians in jail, many of them Hamas members.

ISRAEL - Despite the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant's (ISIS) statements that it will not join the attack on Israel for now, a new video by the Sunni Jihadist group claims to show its terrorists are in fact firing rockets on Israel. In the video, which was uploaded to YouTube, alleged members of ISIS's "Bayt el-Maqdis" (Jerusalem) unit in Gaza can be seen firing rockets towards Israeli civilian centers. A total of eight rockets are seen being fired by the group in the video, a drop in the ocean to the hundreds fired by Gaza terrorist groups in recent days. At the very end of the clip, the rocket launchers are seen being attacked by the IAF shortly after launching. Apparently an Israeli fighter drone patrolling the area located the launchers and opened fire on them.

USA/ISRAEL - The US is prepared to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, President Barack Obama has said. His comments came in a phone call with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr Netanyahu earlier said Israel's operation was progressing as planned with "more stages expected". The air strikes on Gaza, and militant rocket fire into Israel, continued overnight.

USA - It was 1971 when President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse “public enemy number one in the United States.” With those words, Nixon ushered in the “war on drugs,” the attempt to use law enforcement to jail drug users and halt the flow of illegal substances like marijuana and cocaine. Thirty years later, another president, George W Bush, declared war on another word: terrorism. But the war on drugs hadn’t ended yet. Instead of one failed war replacing another soon-to-be-failed war, both drugs and terrorism remain targets for law enforcement and military action that have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and have cost billions of dollars.

AUSTRALIA - A judge in Australia has been criticised after saying incest may no longer be a taboo and that the community may now accept consensual sex between adult siblings. Judge Garry Neilson, from the district court in the state of New South Wales, likened incest to homosexuality, which was once regarded as criminal and "unnatural" but is now widely accepted. He said incest was now only a crime because it may lead to abnormalities in offspring but this rationale was increasingly irrelevant because of the availability of contraception and abortion.

Dr Cathy Kezelman, an advocate for preventing child sex abuse, said incest was horrific, regardless of the ages of those involved. "The relational betrayal of the horrors of incest between a brother and sister of any age is abhorrently criminal," she told The Sydney Morning Herald.

GERMANY - Germany today asked the CIA's station chief in Berlin to leave the country in a dramatic rebuke to Washington after its security services uncovered two cases of alleged American spying in a week. The American intelligence official was told he was no longer welcome in a public signal of Angela Merkel's fury over US spying on Germany. It is highly unusual for a European ally to oust a CIA station chief and the move is the most dramatic response from Germany since it was disclosed last year that the NSA was monitoring Mrs Merkel's phone. "The representative of the US intelligence services at the United States embassy has been asked to leave Germany," a German government spokesman said. "The request occurred against the backdrop of the ongoing investigation by federal prosecutors as well as the questions that were posed months ago about the activities of US intelligence agencies in Germany."

CHINA - China's yuan is a growing force in global finance, more than doubling in use over the past year, according to a new study from the Institute of International Finance Thursday. Although its use in the international payments system remains dwarfed by the dollar and euro, the yuan, officially known as the renminbi, grew to 1.4 percent of total transactions. That jump moved it ahead of the Hong Kong and Singapore dollars and even with the Swiss franc, the sixth most used currency in global transactions, the IIF study said. In trade finance, overwhelmingly dominated by the US dollar, the yuan jumped into second place last year ahead of the euro and the Japanese yen, comprising eight percent of transactions. The United States has repeatedly accused China of keeping the yuan undervalued to enhance its export strength, exacerbating the huge US trade deficit with China.

GERMANY - One year earlier than required, the German government approved plans to force creditors into propping up struggling banks across Europe. As WSJ reports, Germany “leads the way” in Europe by implementing European rules quickly and “creates instruments that allow the winding-down of big systemically relevant institutions without putting the financial stability at risk.” What this means is that taxpayers (theoretically) will not be on the hook (though in reality we are sure the mutually assured destruction defense ticket will be played – especially if Deutsche runs into problems) but as German authorities explain, “This ensures that in times of crisis mainly owners and creditors will contribute to solving the crisis, and not taxpayers.” As a gentle reminder – “creditors” includes depositors… remember Cyprus?

EUROPE - Mario Draghi has called for Brussels to be handed sweeping new powers to enforce eurozone countries’ promises to take tough action to reform their economies. Reopening a high-level debate about how much more integration is needed to make monetary union more sustainable, the ECB president said on Wednesday: “There is a strong case for us to apply the same principles to the governance of structural reforms as we do to fiscal governance.”

USA - Bearing a haunting resemblance to January’s brutally cold weather pattern, a deep pool of cool air from the Gulf of Alaska will plunge into the Great Lakes early next week and then ooze towards the East Coast. Of course, this is July, not January, so temperatures forecast to be roughly 10 to as much as 30 degrees below average won’t have quite the same effect. But make no mistake, in parts of the Great Lakes and Upper Midwest getting dealt the chilliest air, hoodies and jeans will be required. Highs in this region could well get stuck in the 50s and 60s – especially where there is considerable cloud cover. Wednesday morning’s lows may drop into the 40s over a large part of the central US. Remember, this is July!

UK - Chimpanzees raised by humans turn out to be no cleverer than those given an ape upbringing, research has shown. Genes largely determine a chimp's intelligence, a study has shown – and human intervention makes no difference to it at all. Research into chimp intelligence could help scientists get a better handle on human IQ, say scientists. This is because while genes also play a major role in human intelligence, factors such as schooling, home life, economic status, and the culture a person is born in complicate the picture. The findings appear in the journal Current Biology.

ISRAEL - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted at a possible ground incursion into the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip as the Palestinian death toll mounted past 40 from intensified air strikes. Rocket fire from Gaza sparked the military operation neared Dimona, the southern desert town where Israel’s suspected nuclear weapons facility is located. The army said one rocket was intercepted and two landed on Dimona’s outskirts. Hamas claimed responsibility.

GERMANY/USA - Germany has been in an uproar since the arrest last week of a thirty-one year-old employee of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) who stands accused of spying for the United States. He reportedly began passing over 200 secret documents to the CIA back in 2012, receiving 25,000 Euros as payment. He was caught when he offered his services to the Russians as well, an email which German counterintelligence intercepted. While it cannot be denied that allied spy services do in fact spy on each other, this seems an unusually flagrant operation, given the already parlous state of US-German relations over intelligence matters.

UK - It wasn't that long ago that those who claimed that there was a massive pedophile ring involving officials in the highest levels of government were written off as conspiracy theorists and kooks. That is no longer the case, at least in the UK. It turns out that this so called conspiracy theory was true, and is finally being officially investigated. The coverup isn't going well at this point. The British government is even coming under heat for the convenient disappearance of key files regarding the allegations. At least forty British MPs are implicated, but this is really just the tip of the iceberg.

USA - The National Institutes of Health announced today that vials of the virus that causes smallpox were found in a laboratory on its Bethesda, Maryland, campus, which was unequipped and unapproved to handle the deadly pathogen. Because it’s so infectious, the smallpox virus is considered a bioterrorism threat and is only permitted in two labs in the world: One at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Atlanta headquarters and another at the VECTOR Institute in Russia. The newly discovered vials violate an international agreement reached in 1979 aimed at keeping the virus eradicated while allowing some scientists to continue studying it. It’s unclear how long the vials had been in the Bethesda lab’s storage room, which is kept at 5 degrees Fahrenheit.