View from London | The National

Hello from The National and welcome to the View from London – your weekly guide to the big stories from our London bureau ISIS is back and while it is not the outfit it was a decade ago, it has emerged as a threat right across Europe. The terrorist group is drawing on online radicalisation, particularly of teenagers – many of whom have a family heritage from the Balkan or Caucasus diaspora – and recruits from Central Asia including battle-hardened veterans who once fought in Syria for ISIS. Ken McCallum, the head of Britain's MI5 domestic intelligence agency, warned on Tuesday that the terrorist trend that concerned him most was the worsening threats from ISIS, and to a lesser extent from Al Qaeda. “[ISIS] is not the force it was a decade ago,” he said. “But after a few years of being pinned well back, they’ve resumed efforts to export terrorism.” Mr McCallum said that after a year of war in the Middle East, MI5 was “powerfully alive to the risk that events in the Middle East directly trigger terrorist action in the UK”. The focus of attention for security services and law enforcement is the branch of ISIS that originated in Afghanistan, known as ISIS-K , which is named after the historical region of Khorasan that takes in parts of Central and South Asia. The group has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation by governments around the world and it is feared that it has ambitions to organise attacks in Europe and become an inspiration for young people to plot atrocities in its name. In March, ISIS-K said it had carried out an attack that killed at least 137 people at a Moscow concert hall , over which four men from Central Asia have been charged. This is not a threat limited to the former Soviet sphere but a wider propaganda war. Our exclusive report found that authorities around Europe are struggling with threats that are being driven by the ISIS revival. Two 15-year-old girls and a boy, 16, suspected of planning a terrorist attack were arrested in Germany in April. Three other teenagers were arrested in connection with a planned terrorist attack on a concert hall in Vienna, where Taylor Swift was due to perform. The Labour government has invited sovereign wealth funds, businesses and infrastructure funds to attend a 100-day mega summit for international investors with the aim of showing them that the country is “open for business”. Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds M&G, Octopus Energy and TSL Group are the main backers for the event at Guildhall in London. Former Google boss Eric Schmidt has agreed to appear on stage with Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Other headliners will be Ruth Porat, president of Alphabet and Google; Alex Kendall, chief executive of Wayve; and Bruce Flatt, chief executive of Brookfield Asset Management. Elon Musk, who was onstage with former prime minister Rishi Sunak at last year's AI summit, is not invited after taking what critics said was a cheerleader role when the UK was hit by race riots in the summer. The new UK leadership is hoping that its gathering can bring billions of pounds of foreign direct investment (FDI) into the struggling economy. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, spent the months before the July election wooing business and will want to take a dividend for her efforts in government. Hundreds of executives and investors from around the world are expected to attend, while British politicians and senior business figures will make overtures to them about how the UK is “open for business”. They will point to the recent pledge by US private equity firm Blackstone to invest £10 billion ($13.3 billion) in building what will be Europe's largest AI data centre in north-east England as proof that the UK is fertile investment territory. Certainly, Mr Starmer will be determined to ensure that the investment tally from last year’s UK Investment Summit is exceeded. Then prime minister Rishi Sunak hailed a figure of £29.5 billion. The target on Monday will be more than that figure. Anything less will be disastrous. But with greater foresight it might have been higher still. The stumbling block for The National's Chris Blackhurst is that the UK has set a date for Ms Reeves’ first budget, on October 30. Then she will aim to plug what she calls a £22 billion black hole, probably by implementing tax increases on the wealthy and on business. So, far from being commerce’s pal, just two weeks after the delegates have packed their bags and headed for their private jets, Labour will be clobbering companies with higher taxes . That is not a good look, and one Mr Starmer may struggle with on Monday, Blackhurst concludes. Germany has been the centre of the climate change world this week. In the Hanseatic port city of Hamburg , officials have been outlining how Germany can support the spread of the green economy. As much focused on trade and development, the Hamburg Sustainability Conference has, for example, promoted the German idea that building hydrogen infrastructure at key nodes in Africa would be a great leap forward for adapting the economies of frontline states to climate change. This quest for differentiation was reflected in a warning from the world's logistics leaders about the promise of carbon-neutral fuel for cargo. DHL said the aviation sector should take priority because electric cars mean "there is an alternative" for going greener on the road. A more radical remodelling of planes to run on hydrogen will take another decade at least, said board member Melanie Kreis. The summit in Hamburg heard plane maker Airbus is banking on sustainable aviation fuel, typically made from animal fat or used cooking oils, to replace fossil fuels in its jet engines and cut more than 50 per cent of its carbon footprint. Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados, used the talks in Germany to lobby for a tax on global shipping. A levy of 1 per cent in the maritime sector would raise billions for green ships and wider environmentally friendly policies.