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.

SYRIA - Syrian Prime Minister Riad Hijab has defected from President Bashar al-Assad's government to join "the revolution", his spokesman says. Mr Hijab was appointed less than two months ago and his departure is the highest-profile defection since the uprising began in March 2011. State-run TV said he had been sacked. Riad Hijab, who is said to have fled with his family, is a Sunni Muslim from the Deir al-Zour area of eastern Syria which has been caught up in the revolt.

GERMANY - Politicians in Germany's ruling centre-right coalition have expressed renewed concerns about an increased role for the euro zone's permanent bailout fund, which is at the centre of a court case after the German parliament approved it in basic form.

USA - Do you want to know why it seems like good jobs are very rare in the United States today? It is because good jobs are very rare in the United States today. According to a paper that was just released by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, only 24.6 percent of all American jobs qualified as “good jobs” in 2010.

MOSCOW, RUSSIA - Amid the continued uprising in Syria, the Russian Defense Ministry on Friday issued somewhat contradictory statements about a group of its naval warships steaming into the eastern Mediterranean. The first statement said the warships were not planning to call on Tartus, a naval base Russia maintains in Syria. The second, issued several hours later, said it was possible that service boats from the group might call on Tartus to replenish supplies “if the time period of the trip is extended.”

USA/EUROPE - Ben Bernanke and Mario Draghi, with words but not yet actions, demonstrated this week that they are on red alert about the global economy. Expectations are now high that Mr Bernanke's Federal Reserve and Mr Draghi's European Central Bank will act soon to address those worries. But both face immense tactical and political challenges and neither has a handbook to follow. Both appear to be on a path toward expanding their balance sheets with large-scale purchases of debt from private investors.

ARGENTINA - Ships flying the British ensign have been banned from docking in Argentina's largest province under a new law passed yesterday. The legislature of Buenos Aires province voted to prohibit vessels sailing under the British flag from “mooring, loading or carrying out logistical operations” in any of its ports. The law is designed to hinder British ships involved in oil exploration in waters belonging to the islands.

ITALY - "With Italy facing a potentially deeper and more prolonged recession than we had originally anticipated, we think Italian banks' vulnerability to credit risk in the economy is rising," S&P said in a statement. "In this context, the combined effect of mounting problem assets and reduced coverage of loan loss reserves makes banks more vulnerable to the impact of higher credit losses particularly in the event of deterioration in the collateral values of assets," it said. Among the rating agency's moves, S&P cut Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena to BBB-minus from BBB, just one notch above junk. Banca Carige fared less well, losing its BBB-minus investment grade rating in a cut to BB-plus.