IRAQ - As many as 500,000 people have been forced to flee Iraq's second city of Mosul after Islamist militants effectively took control of it. Troops were among those fleeing as hundreds of jihadists from the ISIS group overran the city and much of the surrounding province of Nineveh. Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki responded by asking parliament to declare a state of emergency to grant him greater powers.

GERMANY - Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, has warned David Cameron not to "threaten" her over the appointment of an arch-federalist as President of the European Commission. Mr Cameron has warned that the appointment of Jean-Claude Juncker could make Britain more likely to leave the European Union in a referendum in 2017. Mrs Merkel said that "threats" went against the "European spirit" and she gave her public support for Mr Juncker, the former President of Luxembourg. Mr Cameron said that if Europe fails to heed his calls to reform it will be "unhelpful" ahead of his pledged referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union in 2017. He believes that the appointment of Mr Juncker, the former Prime Minister of Luxembourg, will damage his attempts to convince the British public that Europe should stay in the EU.

EUROPE - Euro-federalists have long dreamed of a united Europe. The Second World War provided them with the rhetorical justification: without continental federalism, racist totalitarianism and war are inevitable. They wish to transform the old continent into the United States of Europe, and the fact that this is an exclusively elite, top-down project without any basis in Europe’s millennia-old history is irrelevant. Indeed while most of Europe’s political establishment and intelligentsia is federalist, no one dares to tell their electorates to forego their respective national symbols.

IRAQ - The insurgent fighters who routed the Iraqi army out of Mosul on Tuesday did not just capture much of Iraq’s second-largest city. They also gained a windfall of arms, munitions and equipment abandoned by the soldiers as they fled — arms that were supplied by the United States and intended to give the troops an edge over the insurgents. The problem is not a new one, but it looms larger now that the United States is shifting its counterterrorism strategy away from using American armed forces directly, and toward relying on allied or indigenous troops and security forces supplied and trained by the United States. President Obama proposed last week that a $5 billion fund be set up to finance such efforts. The militants who swept into control of Mosul on Tuesday are believed to be connected to the main Islamist militant group fighting in Syria.

UK - Proposals to extend the use of Statin drugs should be scrapped, a group of leading doctors and academics says. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence published draft guidance in February calling for their use to be extended to save more lives. It could mean another five million people in England and Wales using them on top of seven million who already do. But in a letter to NICE and ministers, the experts expressed concern about the medicalisation of healthy people. The letter said the draft advice was overly reliant on industry-sponsored trials, which "grossly underestimate adverse effects". The NHS currently spends about £450 million a year on Statins.

USA – Driven by surging obesity, an aging population and doubly high risks among blacks and Latinos, the American epidemic of diabetes has leaped to historic heights in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday. Diabetes mellitus now afflicts 29 million Americans - 9.3% of the nation's population. And 1 in 4 don't know they have the disease, which is thought to increase the risk of heart attack or stroke as much as fourfold. Releasing a welter of new statistics on the disease, the agency said an additional 86 million American adults - nearly 1 in 3 - has prediabetes, a condition in which blood sugar levels are abnormally elevated but below the criteria for diagnosing diabetes.

USA - A US Border Patrol agent stationed in South Texas has reached out to Infowars in a desperate plea for help, stating more than half of immigrants crossing the border end up doing so successfully and that many of those are the most criminal types. “As a Border Patrol Agent, I can tell you as an eye witness that we are currently losing more than we are catching,” the agent claims, whose name has been withheld to protect him from retaliation. Labeling efforts to secure the border an “ongoing crisis,” the agent points to numerous issues further adding to the fruitless task, including a lack of staffing, a lack of support from the American people and the Obama administration’s refusal to acknowledge the crisis. Patrolling the Rio Grande Valley sector, the United States’ southernmost border with Mexico and its most porous, the agent says immigrants who evade capture are typically the most violent.

ISRAEL - Israel’s parliament has elected Reuven Rivlin, an ardent Jewish nationalist with a reputation as a staunch democrat, as the country’s next president, replacing Shimon Peres, the internationally respected statesman who in recent years provided a dovish foil to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr Rivlin, 74, is seen as being independent of Mr Netanyahu. They have a long-standing feud and the Prime Minister sought to thwart his candidacy until he realised he was too popular to stop. While Mr Netanyahu pays lip service to a two-state compromise with the Palestinians, Mr Rivlin unabashedly opposes it. Like Mr Netanyahu he is a firm backer of the illegal Israeli settlement drive in the occupied West Bank.

USA - Thousands of federal government employees are armed with handguns and even semiautomatic and automatic weapons as part of their jobs for agencies that are not traditional law enforcement operations. These gun-toting civil servants include those performing missions that involve Social Security, delivering the mail, predicting the weather, and overseeing railroad pensions. Others authorized to carry firearms conduct audits for the US Department of Agriculture. The Social Security Administration has sought to purchase 174,000 rounds of hollow-point bullets, while at least nine agencies have their own SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) teams, including the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Labor, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the Fish and Wildlife Service.

VENEZUELA - 2013 was a good year for Goldman Sachs investments in Emerging Markets, most notably Venezuelan bonds (as they bet on socialism and won). A year later and Goldman's EM debt portfolio is still loaded with Venezuelan bonds… and the arrears are mounting. As Bloomberg reports, at a time when Venezuela’s record $25 billion in arrears to importers has its citizens waiting hours in line to buy drinking water and crossing borders in search of medicine, President Nicolas Maduro is using the nation’s dwindling supply of dollars to enrich bondholders. Of course, it's not just the government debt but state-owned entities that need the USD and are getting priority over the thirsty population…

EL SALVADOR - The President of the El Salvadoran Center for Appropriate Technologies (CESTA), Ricardo Navarro, has demanded that the US Ambassador to El Salvador, Mari Carmen Aponte, stops pressurizing the Government of El Salvador to buy Monsanto’s GM seeds rather than non-GMO seeds from domestic suppliers. “I would like to tell the US Ambassador to stop pressuring the Government (of El Salvador) to buy ‘improved’ GM seeds,” said Navarro, which is only of benefit to US multinationals and is to the detriment of local seed production, Verdad Digital reported last week. In recent weeks, the US has been pushing the El Salvadoran Government to sign the second Millennium Challenge Compact. One of the main conditions on the agreement is allegedly for the purchasing of GM seeds from Monsanto.

CANADA - Why, after millennia of prohibiting the intentional killing of another human being, in particular by physicians, did Quebec politicians think euthanasia is a “progressive” idea that must be implemented without delay? Bill 52, originally introduced by the Parti Québécois government, was rapidly reintroduced by the Liberals and passed Thursday. Why did Quebec politicians fail to give sufficient weight to the dangers and harms of legalizing euthanasia, especially to vulnerable people — those who are old and fragile or disabled, and whose lives are denigrated by euthanasia’s message that they are not worth living?

EUROPE - The results of the recent European parliamentary elections rattled the continent's political establishment, with the characterisation of the results as a ‘political earthquake' being very much en vogue. The chief source of concern was the spectacular increase in support for Eurosceptic parties across the continent. The strongest effects were felt in Britain, France and Denmark, where the National Front (25 percent), the UK Independence Party (27.5 percent) and the Danish People's Party (27.5 percent) won their respective elections outright. Total support for radical rightwing and leftwing Eurosceptic parties more than doubled.

EUROPE - Last week saw the first time that a major central bank – the ECB [European Central Bank] – cut interest rates below zero. It was also notable for what the ECB did not do, that is to say, it did not begin a policy of quantitative easing. In the end, this non-event could be the more significant. The bond markets have apparently decided that the euro crisis is all over. But we have been here before. They did not foresee the huge crisis of confidence that was to threaten the euro in 2012.

EUROPE - David Cameron says there is a political consensus in Westminster against Jean-Claude Juncker becoming president of the European Commission. Mr Cameron is meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte for wide-ranging talks on the EU's future at Mr Reinfeldt's summer residence in Harpsund. Mrs Merkel has publicly backed Mr Juncker, the candidate nominated by party groups in Europe, but the UK, Sweden and the Netherlands are leading a campaign to block his candidacy. Mr Cameron is strongly opposed to Mr Juncker's belief in a closer political union between EU member states and has described Brussels as "too big" and "too bossy". "The message from the European elections was clear - that we need reform in Europe," a spokesman said. "We need reform so we can promote jobs and growth. Mr Juncker's record shows he would make these reforms more difficult."