GERMANY - Reuters reports that Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann has said that in his view, German Chancellor Angela Merkel will ultimately give up her resistance to giving the ESM a banking licence. FAZ reports that CSU MP Peter Gauweiler – who has lodged one of the complaints against the ESM treaty currently under consideration by the country’s constitutional court – has indicated that he will broaden his complaint to include the possibility of ESM obtaining a banking licence.

GERMANY - In an interview with Berliner Zeitung, SPD Chairman Sigmar Gabriel announced that the SPD was prepared to change its eurozone policy by accepting collective debt liability in exchange for stricter budgetary oversight, claiming that the Merkel government’s current strategy – hitherto broadly supported by the SPD – had failed. Gabriel acknowledged that for such a move, the German constitution would need to be altered and put to the public in a referendum.

USA - The drought gets broader and deeper, covering more than three-fifths of the continental US. And scientific studies show that this sort of drought could only be the beginning. I’m beginning to wonder what will dry up first: water supplies for the parched farmers of the Corn Belt, or synonyms for aridity for the hard-working writers covering the drought?

LINCOLN, NEBRASKA, USA - Thousands of fish are dying in the Midwest as the hot, dry summer dries up rivers and causes water temperatures to climb in some spots to nearly 100 degrees. About 40,000 shovelnose sturgeon were killed in Iowa last week as water temperatures reached 97 degrees.

INDIA - Hiding in his office near the Indian capital as workers armed with iron bars and car parts rampaged through the factory, Maruti Suzuki supervisor Raj Kumar spent two terrified hours trying to comprehend the warzone his workplace had become.

USA - The era of Big Data is upon us. Major corporations in the areas of advertising, social media, defense contracting, and computing are forming partnerships with government agencies to compile virtual dossiers on all humans.

EUROPE - The European Central Bank has come up with a new plan to buy the bonds of debt-ridden countries in a bid to fight the euro crisis. Under the new approach, the ECB would only intervene if governments commit to reforms. But experts criticize the plan as dangerous and undemocratic.

USA - Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, has said that official economic data may mask the "struggle" that many Americans face, as Germany's foreign minister warns politicians "not to talk Europe apart".

GERMANY - Even as Greece's leading creditors expressed satisfaction with a new agreement aimed at labor market reforms, patience in Germany is running out. The tone among politicians allied with Chancellor Merkel is growing sharper. Furthermore, there are new indications that the euro zone's biggest paymaster, Germany, is rapidly losing its appetite for footing the bill and that Chancellor Angela Merkel will have difficulties keeping her coalition together in the face of difficult currency challenges to come.

ITALY - Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Montiwarned of a potential breakup of Europe without greater urgency in efforts to lower government borrowing costs, as a standoff over European Central Bank help for Italy and Spain hardened. Monti, in an interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine published yesterday, said that disagreements within the 17-nation euro area are detracting from the policy response to the debt crisis and undermining the future of the European Union.

EUROPE - The euro zone is inching towards a new plan to tackle its debt crisis in a three-dimensional game of chicken among all the main players. The European Central Bank's heavily qualified offer last week to step in and buy bonds to bring down the borrowing costs of Spain and Italy was the latest gambit in this game. Each of the main protagonists - the central bank, the countries under pressure, EU paymaster Germany, and governments already under a bailout program - is angling for others to make the first move and carry the brunt of the cost.

LONDON, UK - Huge thunderstorms have swept across London as torrential downpours threaten several Olympic events ahead of another potential gold rush for British athletes. The “biblical storm” lashed swathes of the capital this morning as Britain’s wintry weather returned with a vengeance. The torrential rain left scores of homes flooded in North Somerset following heavy rain, which also caused a landslip.

SAUDI ARABIA - Saudi King Abdullah invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for an extraordinary summit of Muslim leaders to be held this month in the holy city of Mecca, state news agency SPA reported Sunday. The Saudi monarch "sent a written letter to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inviting him to attend the extraordinary Islamic solidarity meeting which will be held in Mecca" in mid-August, SPA reported. Tensions have been running high between the Sunni-dominated kingdom and Shiite Iran as both regional powers had taken opposite stances on the uprisings in Bahrain and Syria.

GREECE - Greek police say more than 1,600 illegal immigrants will be deported following a major crackdown in Athens in recent days. More than 6,000 people have been detained, though most were released. Public Order Minister Nikos Dendias defended the crackdown. He said Greece's economic plight meant it could not afford an "invasion of immigrants". He called the immigration issue a "bomb at the foundations of the society and of the state". "Unless we create the proper structure to handle immigration, then we will fall apart," he said.

USA - Chemotherapy can undermine itself by causing a rogue response in healthy cells, which could explain why people become resistant, a study suggests. The treatment loses effectiveness for a significant number of patients with secondary cancers. Writing in Nature Medicine, US experts said chemo causes wound-healing cells around tumours to make a protein that helps the cancer resist treatment. Around 90% of patients with solid cancers, such as breast, prostate, lung and colon, that spread - metastatic disease - develop resistance to chemotherapy.