IRAQ - The American backed offensive to recapture Iraq's biggest dam slowed on Monday, as fighters from the Islamic State rigged part of the area with booby traps and remotely triggered bombs. Whilst a series of air strikes by American F-18 fighter jets reportedly sent most of the jihadists fleeing from the central parts of Mosul dam, a network of landmines and planted explosives they left behind impeded Kurdish ground forces from recapturing the strategically vital terrain.

VATICAN - The Pope has spoken publicly for the first time about his own death, suggesting that he only has two to three years to live and may retire early. Pope Francis, 77, made the claims during a press conference on his return flight from a hectic, five-day visit to South Korea. When asked how he was coping with his huge popularity, the Pontiff replied: “I try to think of my sins, my mistakes, so as not to think that I am somebody. Because I know this will last a short time, two or three years, and then to the house of the Father.”

USA - Some of the major US banks are understood to be drawing up preliminary plans to move certain operations from London to Ireland amid concerns about the widening divide between the UK and Europe. A newspaper report has quoted sources as saying Bank of America, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley were considering Ireland as a favourable location if they needed to shift operations.

ISRAEL - Israel says it has foiled a large-scale plan by Hamas to launch 'a third intifada' against Israel and engineer a coup to overthrow the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has ordered an immediate investigation into the Israeli report saying that it poses "a grave threat to the unity of the Palestinian people and its future", according to Palestinian news Agency Wafa. The announcement of the thwarted plot was revealed by the Shin Bet just hours before the deadline for an Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire negotiation in Cairo was set to expire on Monday evening. The timing could potentially have sought to destabilise the Palestinian negotiating party seeking to present a united front in the Cairo talks.

NORTH KOREA - The United States and South Korea have launched one of their annual military exercises — and North Korea would like to "re-clarify" a few things. "Now that the US imperialists and the South Korean puppet forces declared a war against the DPRK by announcing their plan to apply the 'tailored deterrence strategy' to an actual war, we re-clarify that the Korean-style most powerful and advanced merciless pre-emptive strike will start any time chosen by us," declared an ominous statement from North Korea's General Staff of the Korean People's Army, alluding to a similar threat it made in April to launch a nuclear attack on the US.

USA - The National Guard has been deployed to Ferguson, Missouri, following days of civil unrest after the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager. The state's governor Jay Nixon said the additional resources meant a curfew currently in place would be lifted. Michael Brown, 18, was killed by a police officer on 9 August, sparking clashes between police and protesters. An independent autopsy commissioned by his family showed he was shot at least six times, including twice in the head. In a statement, Mr Nixon said he had deployed the National Guard after a "difficult and dangerous night" of violence and looting on the streets of Ferguson. "I join the people of Ferguson, and all Missourians, in strongly condemning the violent acts we saw last night, including the firing upon law enforcement officers, the shooting of a civilian, the throwing of Molotov cocktails, looting and a co-ordinated attempt to overrun the unified Command Centre," he said.

USA - The decision to call on part-time Guard troops to quell riots and protests puts the unrest into the same category as race riots in Los Angeles and unruly Vietnam protests. Any US state governor is entitled to call on the National Guard for help in an emergency, and a US president can also order its troops - part-time soldiers raised within each state - into action. While its deployment to help quell local unrest is not unprecedented, it is typically a measure of last resort - as appears to be the case in Ferguson, the suburb of St Louis, Missouri, that has been torn apart by eight consecutive nights of protests and riots over the police killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old. Missouri's governor, Jay Nixon, said that he had called in the Guard because of "deliberate, coordinated, and intensifyingly violent acts" by the protesters.

USA - Healthcare in the US is taking flak once more, NBC News reported earlier this week, after a New Jersey teacher was charged nearly $9,000 for a tetanus shot and a bandage on a cut finger. Baer Hanusz-Rajkowski went to Bayonne Medical Center last summer after he cut his finger with a hammer and thought he needed stitches. After the cut turned out to be more benign, a nurse practitioner merely sterilized the cut, applied antibacterial ointment and a bandage on it, and gave Hanusz-Rajkowski a tetanus shot before sending him home. The cost? $8,200 for the emergency room visit, $180 for the shot, $242 for the bandage and $8 for the ointment, plus hundreds of dollars for the nurse practitioner. "I got a Band-Aid and a tetanus shot," Hanusz-Rajkowski exclaimed. "How could it be $9,000? This is crazy. "According to Linda Schwimmer of the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute, the right price for getting a finger bandaged should be $400 to $1,000.

ICELAND - Imagine a typical volcano. Then picture a 16-mile-wide volcano that stretched from Philadelphia to 30 miles past New York City. Now imagine this gargantuan volcano squished under a thick ice sheet that would unleash a torrent of meltwater as soon as an eruption began. Finally, envision this super-massive, ice-encased volcano unleashing the largest lava flow on Earth in the last 12,000 years - and you'll probably have some idea why Iceland's authorities are sounding the alarm over the recent rumbling emerging from the Bárðarbunga volcano.

MIDDLE EAST - The barbarism of the Islamic State is real enough, so why fabricate atrocities? The girl’s blue-check dress is dirty and dishevelled. She is very young but it is difficult to guess her age. She has no face. Her head is gone. You might have seen this image in the past week, shared as it has been countless times on social media via websites keen to draw attention to the unfolding threat from Islamic State militants in northern Syria and Iraq. “A distraught father in Syria holds the lifeless body of his decapitated daughter, executed by militants because she was of a Christian family,” recounts one of those sites, Catholic Online. “All humanity owes a debt to this baby girl, to find her murderers and bring them to justice, dead or alive.”

USA - Many countries agree that the US politicizes the dollar by punishing nations who don't abide by US sanctions. With this American approach comes isolation, and the risk of the dollar being replaced as global currency. The United States is an arrogant power, which, like many other empires (and people), is witnessing its influence decline. Indeed, it is hastening this degeneration by wasting its political and symbolic capital, expending it as if the country still stood at the zenith of its glory.

ISRAEL - Security Cabinet member, Economics Minister and Jewish Home Chairman Naftali Bennett called on Israel to immediately halt negotiations in Cairo on Sunday, saying any truce agreement is bound to bring another war with Hamas. "This situation, in which we are biting our nails in nervous anticipation of a reply from a murderous terrorist organization should be stopped," Bennett urged. "We must immediately stop negotiations with Hamas, and take fate into our own hands, under a simple premise: humanitarianism - yes, terrorism - no."

EGYPT - Even as Israel eased the ban on Gaza fishermen Sunday in a "goodwill" gesture during the Cairo truce talks, Hamas declared that only it will decide "when Israelis return to their homes" in the rocket-beleaguered south. Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu-Zuhri said "the Israelis won't be secure until our people are secure, until they remove the blockade from us completely." Ironically given his "concern" for Gaza residents' security, Abu-Zuhri early in the operation exhorted Gazans to serve as human shields in a TV interview. Abu-Zuhri spoke on Sunday while at a Hamas support rally in Rafah, according to the Palestinian Arab Ma'an News Agency. "The Israelis won't return to their homes until Hamas lets them, and not (Prime Minister Binyamin) Netanyahu," threatened Abu-Zuhri. "The preference is to reach an agreement, but the occupier needs to stop delaying; we are looking for an agreement not from weakness but rather from a position of power."

MIDDLE EAST - The Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza on Sunday called for an escalation of terror attacks on Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria as an "expression of support" for the war on Israel being waged from Gaza. Hamas spokesperson Fawzi Barhoum told the Palestinian Arab Safa news agency that such terror attacks serve to wear down the "occupation" and press Israel to end the "aggression" in Gaza, by forcing it to open the blockade and submit to Hamas's demands.

TEMPLE MOUNT, ISRAEL - Deputy speaker of the Israeli Knesset Moshe Feiglin on Sunday morning toured the holy Al-Aqsa mosque compound under heavy escort by Israeli special forces. A Ma'an reporter in Jerusalem said that Israeli police closed most of the main gates of the compound, denying all Palestinian women and men under 50 access to the holy place, as the right-wing Israeli politician entered from the Moroccan Gate. Witnesses said Feiglin along with a group of right-wing Israeli Jews and a cameraman toured the compound before they left through the Chain Gate, adding that Feiglin had performed religious rituals beside the Dome of the Rock Mosque. Witnesses highlighted that Feiglin and his group toured the compound barefoot, apparently out of respect for the foundations of the Jewish temple they believe lies underneath the area.