UK - One expert has voiced his concerns that new rules, which took effect on June 1, could mean that diseased animals could now go undetected when they are slaughtered. In the past, carcasses were cut open for inspection but under the new European regulations supported by Britain's Food Standards Agency (FSA), they will have to rely on visual checks alone. Ron Spellman, director-general of the European Working Community for Food Inspectors and Consumer Protection (EWFC), which represents meat inspectors across the EU, told the BBC: "Last year we know that there were at least 37,000 pigs' heads with abscesses or tuberculosis lesions in lymph nodes in the head. They won't be cut now." Meat from pigs' heads is recovered by specialised parts of boning plants and goes into pies, sausages and other processed foods.

USA - We are starting to see that there are very serious consequences for filling up our oceans with massive amounts of plastic that never biodegrades. In fact, this is one of the greatest environmental disasters of all time and yet you rarely hear it talked about. Virtually every molecule of plastic ever created still exists somewhere, and we all use things made out of plastic every single day. But have you ever stopped to think about what happens to all of that plastic? Well, the truth is that a lot of it ends up in our oceans. In fact, humanity produces approximately 200 billion pounds of plastic every year, and about 10 percent of that total ends up in our oceans. In other words, we are slowly but steadily filling up our oceans with our garbage.

VATICAN - Pope Francis has criticized Europe for a declining birthrate, a high percentage of unemployed people and discarding the elderly. He called Europe “tired,” saying it risks becoming a “throw-away culture.” Pope Francis: UN should encourage ‘legitimate’ redistribution of wealth. “Europe is tired. We have to help rejuvenate it, to find its roots. It’s true: it has disowned its roots. But we need to help it find them,” Francis said during his visit to the Community of Sant'Egidio in Rome’s Santa Maria in Trastevere Basilica. The community’s volunteers provide various forms of help to homeless, immigrants, elderly, disabled, and young people.

VATICAN - The centuries-old divide between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church is a 'scandal', Pope Francis said as he met the Archbishop of Canterbury in Rome. The leader of 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide said a goal of full unity between the two churches 'may seem distant' but it remained an aim that should direct their 'every step'. He said progress towards full unity would not be the result of human actions alone, but would be a 'free gift of God'.

VATICAN - Pope Francis on Monday denounced those getting rich through speculation in financial markets, calling on them to use their investments for the good of humanity. "It is increasingly intolerable that financial markets are shaping the destiny of peoples rather than serving their needs, or that the few derive immense wealth from financial speculation while the many are deeply burdened by the consequences," he said.

DENMARK - Denmark's Parliament has approved a new law that forces the country's churches to conduct formal gay marriages rather than just short blessing ceremonies. Under the new law, priests maintain the right to refuse to officiate the ceremony but the local bishop must arrange a replacement for their church. Denmark has offered civil unions to gay couples since 1989 and legalized gay marriage in 2012. The first church-conducted gay marriages could take place as early as this weekend.

IRAQ - Sunni militants have seized the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar, officials and residents say. Militants led by ISIS - the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant - captured key cities including Mosul and Tikrit last week, but some towns were retaken. UN human rights chief Navi Pillay said the "apparently systematic series of executions [of non-combatants] almost certainly amounted to war crimes". The US earlier announced it might use drone strikes to halt the ISIS advance. "They're not the whole answer, but they may well be one of the options that are important," said US Secretary of State John Kerry.

EUROPE - The appointment of an arch-federalist as the European Commission president risks creating a ‘dramatic’ backlash that will hasten Britain’s exit from the EU, one of the country’s most senior diplomats has warned. A leaked document said Ivan Rogers, the UK’s permanent representative to the EU, believes the ‘die is cast’ in favour of Jean-Claude Juncker, the former prime minister of Luxembourg.

IRAQ - The Islamist militants taking over large parts of Iraq have social media skills that have seen them run progaganda rings around their internationally backed but less sophisticated opponents. Social media is proving a highly effective weapon in the armory of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (Isis), striking fear far beyond the immediate battleground of northern Iraq. In the five days since Isis took the world by surprise with the sudden overthrow of the Iraq army in Mosul, the former al-Qaeda affiliate has posted a series of bloodthirsty messages and videos on social media including Twitter and YouTube. Such is the trepidation with which the posts are received that the Iraqi government has sought to block the Internet, to prevent the spread of Isis’s electronic terror.

USA - A California wildfire that has already destroyed three structures and blackened some three square miles of forest land near Sequoia National Park was threatening 1,000 more homes on Monday, officials said. More than 1,100 firefighters were battling the so-called Shirley Fire, which erupted on Friday evening on the park's outskirts northeast of Bakersfield and prompted the evacuation of several foothill communities. The flames jumped containment lines on Saturday, fueled by high winds and dry brush, according to the US Forest Service, despite the efforts of water-dropping helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. California’s fire season has been particularly severe this year, with one of the worst droughts in the state's history playing a substantial role in the size and number of wildfires across the state.

RUSSIA - Russia cut off gas to Ukraine on Monday in a dispute over unpaid bills that could disrupt supplies to the rest of Europe and set back hopes for peace between the former Soviet neighbours. After the weekend loss of 49 troops when pro-Russian rebels shot down a military transport plane, Ukraine's new president ordered his forces to retake full control of their border with Russia - saying this could then pave the way for negotiations. Calling time on weeks of wrangling in talks over natural gas supplies, Russia said Kiev had missed a Monday morning deadline to repay $1.95 billion owed for previous purchases and announced Ukraine would now only get gas it has paid for in advance. All that sent Russian financial markets lower on Monday and helped oil and gas prices climb in Europe that were already firm on fears of supply disruption due to violence in Iraq.

USA - South Texas church groups are working around the clock to shuttle what appears to be hundreds of illegal immigrants to housing facilities, benefiting the Obama administration in its deliberate plan to flood America with illegal aliens for political purposes. Infowars reporters are on the ground in the Rio Grande Valley, the continental United States’ southernmost region, where children and parents from Central America are pouring by the thousands past the US-Mexico border with hopes the US will soon grant them amnesty, which the Obama administration has practically done through selective enforcement of immigration laws.

USA - A moderate earthquake shook northwest Alaska on Monday, the fifth temblor of the same magnitude since April in an area with otherwise little activity, seismologists said. The magnitude 5.7 quake struck at 4:01 am Monday northeast of the village of Noatak, the Alaska Earthquake Center reported. As with other temblors in the earthquake swarm, the quake was felt in Noatak, an Inupiat Eskimo community of 560 people.

Before the swarm that began April 18, the last known quake of similar size in the area was a magnitude 5.5 quake that occurred in 1981, earthquake center seismologist Natasha Ruppert said. The swarm of magnitude 5.7 quakes is connected to more than 300 smaller aftershocks, some with magnitudes in the high 3s, Ruppert said.

ISRAEL - Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu) slammed MK Hanin Zoabi in a Facebook post Tuesday, after the Israeli Arab MK justified the kidnapping of three yeshiva students by Hamas terrorists. "Not only are the kidnappers terrorists; Hanin Zoabi is a terrorist," Liberman said. He called for harsh judgement to be meted upon the MK. "The fate of the kidnappers and the fate of Zoabi, an inciter, should be the same." Earlier Tuesday, Zoabi stated to a shocked interviewer on Radio Tel Aviv that the "kidnappers are not terrorists" and that the kidnapping is a "last resort" for Palestinian Arabs frustrated by their lives. "They are not terrorists, I do not agree with you!" Zoabi fired. "They have seen no other way to change their reality and they have to resort to these measures until Israel sobers up a bit and feels the suffering of others."

USA - America, its government, businesses, and people - are nearly $60 trillion in debt, according to the latest economic data from the St Louis Federal Reserve. And private debt - not government borrowing - is the biggest reason for the huge deficit. Total US debt at the end of the first quarter of 2014, on March 31 totalled almost $59.4 trillion - up nearly $500 billion from the end of the fourth quarter of 2013, according to the data. Total debt (the combination of government, business, mortgage, and consumer debt) was $2.2 trillion 40 years ago.