GERMANY - Germany's intelligence head said Sunday that his state, like the UK, France and other western nations, faces a very high danger of citizens returning to conduct terror attacks from Syria and Iraq, where they are fighting in the ranks of the extremist Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS). An example of German propaganda was seen as early as last November, when a German Muslim convert in Syria fighting for ISIS released a video in German calling for his countrymen to join in jihad. The intel chief added "the Islamic State is, so to speak, the 'in' thing - much more attractive than the Nusra Front, the Al Qaeda spin-off in Syria. What attracts people is the intense brutality, the radicalism and rigor. That suggests to them that it is a more authentic organization even than Al Qaeda," said Maassen. "Al Qaeda fades besides the Islamic State when it comes to brutality."

USA - The speech by former US Vice-President Al Gore was apocalyptic. ‘The North Polar ice cap is falling off a cliff,’ he said. ‘It could be completely gone in summer in as little as seven years. Seven years from now.’ Those comments came in 2007 as Mr Gore accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaigning on climate change. But seven years after his warning, The Mail on Sunday can reveal that, far from vanishing, the Arctic ice cap has expanded for the second year in succession – with a surge, depending on how you measure it, of between 43 and 63 per cent since 2012. To put it another way, an area the size of Alaska, America’s biggest state, was open water two years ago, but is again now covered by ice. Crucially, the ice is also thicker, and therefore more resilient to future melting.

UK - A culture of Left-wing political correctness led politicians and officials to ignore the plight of young girls who were being sexually abused by Asian men, Labour figures have warned. Ann Cryer, an MP from 1997 until 2010, told The Sunday Telegraph how she had feared being called “racist” when, in 2002, she exposed a sex-abuse scandal involving Pakistani men in her constituency of Keighley, West Yorkshire. A “politically correct Left just saw it as racism”, she said. At the same time, Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP for Rochdale, revealed that even now some of his colleagues disapproved of his efforts to uncover child abuse, because some were “obsessing about multiculturalism”.

UK - Political correctness is a vile, perverted ideology which is wrecking our society and ruining the lives of the innocent. That is the only conclusion that can be drawn from the shocking child abuse scandal in Rotherham. Yesterday an official report from Professor Alexis Jay, the former chief inspector of social work in Scotland, revealed that no fewer than 1,400 girls in the area, some of them as young as 11, had been systematically targeted, raped and assaulted over a 16-year period.

WEST AFRICA - WFP's West Africa Director Denise Brown said the organisation was currently providing food for around 150,000 people in Ebola-striken nations but needed to rapidly scale that up as the worst ever epidemic of the virus advanced. Senegal on Friday became the fifth country to confirm it had been touched by the outbreak that has infected more than 3,000 people - killing some 1,550 of them - since it was detected in March. The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday the outbreak could infect a total of 20,000 people before it ends.

VATICAN - As Pope Francis continues to straddle the fine line between calling for the end of persecution of Christians in Iraq and blessing American airstrikes against the Islamic State (also known as the “Caliphate,” ISIS, or ISIL), there is increasing concern for the pontiff’s — and the public’s — safety. Earlier this week, the Roman newspaper Il Tempo published a disturbing report that Francis is “in the crosshairs” of ISIS for “bearing false witness” against Islam.

USA - Who runs the world’s most lucrative shakedown operation? The Sicilian mafia? The People’s Liberation Army in China? The kleptocracy in the Kremlin? If you are a big business, all these are less grasping than America’s regulatory system. The formula is simple: find a large company that may (or may not) have done something wrong; threaten its managers with commercial ruin, preferably with criminal charges; force them to use their shareholders’ money to pay an enormous fine to drop the charges in a secret settlement (so nobody can check the details). Then repeat with another large company.

USA - After a week of talk of eliminating the "cancer" of ISIS, President Obama said Thursday that he was not planning to significantly expand the war against the Islamic extremist movement anytime soon. His remarks came after days of heated debate inside the top levels of his own national security bureaucracy about how, where, and whether to strike ISIS in Syria. But those deliberations – which included a bleak intelligence assessment of America's potential allies in Syria - failed to produce a consensus battle plan. And so Obama, who has long been reluctant to enter into the Syrian conflict, told reporters Thursday that “we don’t have a strategy yet” for confronting ISIS on a regional level. Those inside the administration advocating for going after ISIS in both Iraq and Syria were sorely disappointed – and lamented their boss's lack of urgency in rooting out a threat that only days before was being described in near-apocalyptic terms.

UK - Professor Mel Greaves claims that most cancers cannot be cured and experts should look at ways of preventing and managing the disease instead. Most cancers cannot be cured and scientists should give up trying and, instead, look for ways to manage the disease, the director of the Centre for Evolution and Cancer at The Institute of Cancer Research, has claimed

PAPUA NEW GUINEA - A volcano in eastern Papua New Guinea has erupted, disrupting flights and spewing rocks and ash into the air. Mount Tavurvur on New Britain island erupted early on Friday, forcing local communities to evacuate. Officials said there have not been any reports of deaths or injuries so far. Local residents of the island's Rabaul district were advised to remain indoors to avoid falling ash. Australia issued travel warnings against visiting the island. Papua New Guinea lies on the Pacific "Ring of Fire" and is home to a number of active volcanoes. The same volcano destroyed Rabaul town in 1994 when it erupted simultaneously with nearby Mount Vulcan.

TURKEY - Abu Ali, a commander of a moderate Syrian rebel group in northern Syria, proudly shows a black laptop partly covered in dust. "We took it this year from an ISIS hideout," he says. As we switched on the Dell laptop, it indeed still worked. Nor was it password-protected. But then came a huge disappointment: After we clicked on "My Computer," all the drives appeared empty. Appearances, however, can be deceiving. Upon closer inspection, the ISIS laptop wasn't empty at all: Buried in the "hidden files" section of the computer were 146 gigabytes of material, containing a total of 35,347 files in 2,367 folders. Abu Ali allowed us to copy all these files - which included documents in French, English, and Arabic - onto an external hard drive.

GERMANY - Ordinary Germans are spooked about the future. Businesses are starting to see black clouds on the horizon. And an economy that has been the envy of Europe is showing cracks, shrinking unexpectedly last quarter amid the conflict in Ukraine. It might seem like enough to put any leader into trouble. But Chancellor Angela Merkel's popularity remains sky-high — with nobody in sight to touch her.

USA - Its been almost nine years since the last major hurricane struck the US Mainland. That's 3,230 days. Remember, we are talking MAJOR hurricanes, of Category 3 strength or higher. The last major hurricane was Hurricane Wilma which hit Florida on October 24, 2005. This is unprecedented in the hurricane record since 1900. It’s a full 2 1/2 years ahead of the second-longest US hurricane drought ever recorded. Of course, we have had hurricanes since 2005. 2010 was a very active year in the Atlantic basin, with 19 named storms. Twelve of those were hurricanes and five of those were major hurricanes (Category 3 or higher). Amazingly, in 2010, none of those hurricanes made landfall in the United States. That means the hurricane drought for the US Mainland will eventually end… maybe even this year…

SAUDI ARABIA - King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has warned that the West will be the next target of the jihadists sweeping through Syria and Iraq, unless there is "rapid" action. "If we ignore them, I am sure they will reach Europe in a month and America in another month," he said in remarks quoted on Saturday by Asharq al-Awsat daily and Saudi-backed Al-Arabiya television station. "Terrorism knows no border and its danger could affect several countries outside the Middle East," said the king who was speaking at a welcoming ceremony on Friday for new ambassadors, including a new envoy from Saudi ally the United States. The Islamic State (IS) jihadist group has prompted widespread concern as it advances in both Syria and Iraq, killing hundreds of people, including in gruesome beheadings and mass executions. Lack of action would be "unacceptable" in the face of the phenomenon, King Abdullah said.

EUROPE - Scientist transmits message into the mind of a colleague 5,000 miles away using brain waves. Scientists used EEG headsets to record electrical activity in the brain. Electrical activity from words ‘hola’ and ‘ciao’ were converted into binary. The greeting was sent from Thiruvananthapuram, India to Strasbourg. A computer translated the message and then used electrical stimulation to implant it in the receiver’s mind, appearing as specific flashes of light. According to the researchers, this is the first time humans have sent a message almost directly into each other’s brains