UK - Written by Richard Littlejohn (author, broadcaster and journalist): Explain the difference. Paramilitaries fire a missile which brings down a civilian airliner over Ukraine. They are widely condemned as murderous gangsters and war criminals who must be hunted down and brought to justice. Another ruthless gang of paramilitaries fire missiles at a civilian airport in Israel. They are hailed as heroic ‘resistance fighters’ and receive widespread support in the West. Let’s just imagine, for a moment, that a rocket fired from Gaza had hit a plane coming in to land at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. What if a British Airways jet had been brought down over Israel, with a similar loss of life to the 298 people who perished on Malaysian flight MH17? Would it still be considered appropriate to hold yet another march through London this weekend, waving banners proclaiming ‘We are all Hamas now’?

USA - Al Qaeda, nation states, and criminals are preparing for major cyber attacks against US infrastructure that could be comparable to the devastating September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, a senior Justice Department official said on Thursday. “We’re in a pre-9/11 moment, in some respects, with cyber,” said John Carlin, assistant attorney general for national security in the Justice Department.

IRAN - Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, stated on Wednesday that the only solution for the region is the destruction of Israel, and that the armed confrontation must expand beyond Gaza. Meanwhile, revolutionary guards announced new missiles which could destroy Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. Fars News Agency, a media outlet run by the Iranian state, reported today that Khamenei addressed the conflict in Gaza in a meeting with Iranian college students. “These crimes which are beyond imagination and show the true nature of the wolfish and child killer regime, which the only solution is its destruction,” the ayatollah declared to his audience. “However, until that time, the expansion of the armed resistance of the Palestinians of the West Bank is the only way to confront this wild regime.”

ISRAEL - Violence broke out Thursday night near the Kalandia checkpoint, located in the West Bank between Jerusalem and Ramallah, as residents of the West Bank village clashed with police in protests against the IDF's operation in the Gaza Strip. Some 10,000 Palestinians protested near the checkpoint, throwing rocks, firebombs and fireworks at Israeli security forces, and setting tires ablaze. The IDF forces and Border Police were using crowd dispersal means on the masses.

ISRAEL - Israeli leaders have told Britain it should support its continuing war in Gaza because Hamas's rocket attacks are like the Blitz. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister, were speaking as they met the new Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, who is on a whirlwind tour of the Middle East. "I think you, as a representative of the UK, of Britain, have a special understanding, at least a historical understanding, of what Israel is undergoing," Mr Netanyahu said. "There's only been one other instance where a democracy has been rocketed and pelleted with these projectiles of death, and that's Britain during World War Two. Israel is undergoing a similar bombardment now."

ISRAEL - President Shimon Peres accused Qatar on Wednesday of becoming “the world’s largest funder of terror” due to its financial support for Hamas in Gaza. “Qatar does not have the right to send money for rockets and tunnels which are fired at innocent civilians,” the outgoing statesman told UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in Jerusalem. “Their funding of terror must stop. If they want to build then they should, but they must not be allowed to destroy.”

GERMANY - Jewish people are being attacked and abused on the streets of Germany as though the country were back in the Nazi era, political and religious leaders warned yesterday. Escalating violence between Israel and Hamas in Gaza has prompted a disturbing rise in anti-Semitism in Europe in the last few days. Murderous slogans dating back to the days of Hitler have been chanted at pro-Palestinian rallies in Germany. Jewish-owned shops were attacked and burned in riots in France at the weekend. The Israeli ambassador to Germany, Yakov Hadas-Handelsman, said: ‘They pursue the Jews in the streets of Berlin… as if we were in 1938.’ Jewish groups expressed disgust over the tide of hate crimes and warned of ‘a new level of hatred and violence in all of Europe’. Foreign ministers from Germany, France and Italy yesterday issued a joint statement condemning the rise in anti-Semitic protests and violence and vowed to combat hostility against Jewish people.

NORWAY - Norway is boosting security because of an imminent threat from people linked to Islamist militants in Syria, the Norwegian intelligence chief says. The head of the PST security service, Benedicte Bjoernland, said it had "reliable information" about plans for some kind of attack "within days". She called the threat "non-specific" but "credible". Norway suffered a twin terror attack in 2011 when far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people. Norwegian police are stepping up their presence at airports, stations and border crossings because of the new threat. Other European governments, including the UK and France, have warned of the risk that "home-grown" Islamist volunteers may return from the Syrian conflict and carry out attacks.

USA - Google Inc has embarked on what may be its most ambitious and difficult science project ever: a quest inside the human body. Called Baseline Study, the project will collect anonymous genetic and molecular information from 175 people — and later thousands more — to create what the company hopes will be the fullest picture of what a healthy human being should be. The early-stage project is run by Andrew Conrad, a 50-year-old molecular biologist who pioneered cheap, high-volume tests for HIV in blood-plasma donations.

UKRAINE - Senior US officials now admit that the Malaysian airlines passenger plane was likely accidentally shot down. The Russian government claims Ukrainian fighter jets were flying very close to Malaysian Flight 17 when it was shot down. Others claim that Ukrainian fighter jets were escorting the Malaysian plane through Ukrainian airspace.

IRAQ - Remember when the extremist Al Qaeda spinoff ISIS (or, now known as Islamic State following the formation of its own caliphate in the middle of Iraq and Syria) was still a "thing" two weeks ago? In this case out of sight does not mean out of mind, and while the world has found a new story line to follow in the middle east with the war between Israel and Gaza, now in its 14th day - whenever it is not busy responding to emotional appeals about the MH17 crash - ISIS has continued to expand and as Al Arabiya reports it "is now in control of 35 percent of the Syrian territory following a string of victories, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Friday."

ISRAEL - Israel won a partial reprieve from the economic pain of its Gaza war on Thursday with the lifting of a US ban on commercial flights to Tel Aviv, as fighting pushed the Palestinian death toll over 700. A truce remained elusive despite intensive mediation bids. Palestinians said residents of two southern villages were trapped by tank shelling, preventing evacuation of casualties. Israel says it needs more time to eradicate cross-border tunnels used by Hamas for attacks, while the Palestinian Islamists demand the blockade on the Gaza Strip be lifted. Gaza has been rocked by regular bouts of violence since Israel unilaterally pulled out of the territory in 2005. Hamas, which rejects Israel's right to exist, balked at Egypt's proposal for an unconditional truce, saying its conditions had to be met in full before any end to the conflict. Israel briefly held fire last week at Cairo's behest.

NIGERIA - At least 82 people were killed on Wednesday in two suicide bombings in the north Nigerian city of Kaduna, one aimed at opposition leader and ex-president Muhammadu Buhari and another at a moderate Muslim cleric about to lead a crowd in prayer. The attacks bore the hallmarks of Islamist militant group Boko Haram, which considers all those who do not share its views to be enemies. But it may also have been linked to politics before the 2015 elections. In the deadliest attack, a bomber in a car full of explosives hurtled towards Buhari's convoy at the crowded Kawo market, his son told Reuters on the scene and police said later. A Red Cross official said at least 50 people were killed there.

CHINA - The China-US sorpasso is looming. I do not mean the much-exaggerated moment when China’s GDP will overtake America's GDP – which may not happen in the lifetime of anybody reading this blog post – as China slows to more pedestrian growth rates (an objective of premier Li Keqiang.) The sorpasso may instead be the ominous moment when China’s debt ratios overtake the arch-debtor itself. I had presumed that this inflection point was still a very long way off, but a new report from Stephen Green at Standard Chartered argues that China’s aggregate debt level has reached 251 per cent of GDP, as of June. This is up 20 percentage points of GDP since late 2013. The total is much higher than normal estimates, though it tallies with what I have heard privately from officials at the IMF and the BIS.

UK - Global stock markets are at risk from a spike in oil prices which could derail the fragile economic recovery and lead to a major correction in share prices, warns Steen Jakobsen, chief economist at Saxo Bank. Geopolitical risk has increased sharply following the events of last week, a point that has been largely ignored by the ever panglossian global equity markets that march on upward.