USA - Los Angeles officials announced Monday they are beefing up their water-wasting patrols. But just don’t call them "water cops." Until now, the Department of Water and Power has assigned just one inspector to drive around handling complaints of water wasting in a city of 4 million people. The DWP said Monday it now has four water-wasting inspectors, but officials emphasized that their job will be more educational than enforcement. From January through June, the unit received 1,400 reports of violations and handed out 863 warnings letters. But so far, no one has been fined. This tracks with the approach of many California cities, which have found it more effective to warn residents about using too much water than to ticket them.

USA - The average price for all types of ground beef per pound hit its all-time high - $3.884 per pound - in the United States in July, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). That was up from $3.880 per pound in June. A year ago, in July 2013, the average price for a pound of ground beef was $3.459 per pound. Since then, the average price for a pound of ground beef has gone up 42.1 cents - or about 12 percent. Five years ago, in July 2009, the average price for a pound of ground beef was $2.147, according to the BLS. In those five years, the average price has climbed by $1.737 per pound - or almost 81 percent.

UK - Sending sexually explicit pictures by mobile phone is now part of everyday life for almost half of teenagers, according to new research showing a backlash among young people against Britain’s increasingly sexualised culture. Eight out of 10 18-year-olds now believe that pornography is too easy to access, including by accident, and six in 10 admit that its pervasiveness made the process of growing up more difficult for them.

USA - Last night, the Intercept’s Ryan Devereaux and Lukas Hermsmeier, a reporter for the German newspaper Bild, were among those arrested (or detained, as authorities are calling it) during the escalating protests over Michael Brown’s shooting in Ferguson, Missouri. Getty Images photographer Scott Olsen was also taken into custody. A few days earlier, the Huffington Post’s Ryan Reilly and the Washington Post’s Wesley Lowery were also arrested in Ferguson. No charges have been brought against any of the journalists, but the pretext for all four arrests appears to be a “failure to disperse” quickly enough. Each reporter was subsequently released, but it’s deeply disturbing that, in the United States in 2014, journalists are facing intimidation and threats from authorities for, from all reports, merely doing their constitutionally-protected jobs.

UKRAINE - Ukraine's next crisis will be a devastatingly economic one, as violent conflict destroys critical infrastructure in the east and brings key industry to a halt, further weakening the energy sector by crippling coal-based electricity production. The Ukrainian military's showdown with separatists in the industrial east has forced coal mines to severely cut production or close down entirely. This has led to an electricity crisis that can only be staunched by cutting domestic production along with exports to Europe, Crimea, and Belarus -- or worse, getting more imports from Russia. Key industry sources say they will potentially run out of coal in less than three weeks.

USA - 109,631,000 Americans lived in households that received benefits from one or more federally funded "means-tested programs" — also known as welfare — as of the fourth quarter of 2012, according to data released Tuesday by the Census Bureau. The 109,631,000 living in households taking federal welfare benefits as of the end of 2012, according to the Census Bureau, equaled 35.4 percent of all 309,467,000 people living in the United States at that time. When those receiving benefits from non-means-tested federal programs — such as Social Security, Medicare, unemployment and veterans benefits — were added to those taking welfare benefits, it turned out that 153,323,000 people were getting federal benefits of some type at the end of 2012.

ICELAND - Tourists have been evacuated by Iceland’s national police force from an area north of the country’s largest volcano amid fears that it could erupt. All roads leading to the region north of the Bardarbunga volcano have been blocked as officials prepare for a possible eruption after five days of seismic activity. The National Commissioner of the Icelandic Police warned that a quick evacuation would not be possible if the volcano suddenly began to belch lava and a cloud of ash. The NCIP also said in a statement that it has raised its civil protection level to ‘alert phase’. The police agency said: ‘This is first and foremost a precautionary action since the evacuation of the area is impossible on short notice.’ Areas near the volcano would be at risk of flooding from ice melt, should an eruption occur. Iceland has already raised its aviation alert level to orange, the second-highest level on the five-colour scale.

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE - Pope Francis called Monday for collective action through the United Nations to "stop unjust aggression" in Iraq, in an implicit criticism of unilateral US air strikes there. The pope, speaking to reporters aboard his flight back from a trip to South Korea, said he was ready to visit Iraq "if necessary", providing it would help people under threat there.

IRAQ - The American backed offensive to recapture Iraq's biggest dam slowed on Monday, as fighters from the Islamic State rigged part of the area with booby traps and remotely triggered bombs. Whilst a series of air strikes by American F-18 fighter jets reportedly sent most of the jihadists fleeing from the central parts of Mosul dam, a network of landmines and planted explosives they left behind impeded Kurdish ground forces from recapturing the strategically vital terrain.

VATICAN - The Pope has spoken publicly for the first time about his own death, suggesting that he only has two to three years to live and may retire early. Pope Francis, 77, made the claims during a press conference on his return flight from a hectic, five-day visit to South Korea. When asked how he was coping with his huge popularity, the Pontiff replied: “I try to think of my sins, my mistakes, so as not to think that I am somebody. Because I know this will last a short time, two or three years, and then to the house of the Father.”

USA - Some of the major US banks are understood to be drawing up preliminary plans to move certain operations from London to Ireland amid concerns about the widening divide between the UK and Europe. A newspaper report has quoted sources as saying Bank of America, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley were considering Ireland as a favourable location if they needed to shift operations.

ISRAEL - Israel says it has foiled a large-scale plan by Hamas to launch 'a third intifada' against Israel and engineer a coup to overthrow the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has ordered an immediate investigation into the Israeli report saying that it poses "a grave threat to the unity of the Palestinian people and its future", according to Palestinian news Agency Wafa. The announcement of the thwarted plot was revealed by the Shin Bet just hours before the deadline for an Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire negotiation in Cairo was set to expire on Monday evening. The timing could potentially have sought to destabilise the Palestinian negotiating party seeking to present a united front in the Cairo talks.

NORTH KOREA - The United States and South Korea have launched one of their annual military exercises — and North Korea would like to "re-clarify" a few things. "Now that the US imperialists and the South Korean puppet forces declared a war against the DPRK by announcing their plan to apply the 'tailored deterrence strategy' to an actual war, we re-clarify that the Korean-style most powerful and advanced merciless pre-emptive strike will start any time chosen by us," declared an ominous statement from North Korea's General Staff of the Korean People's Army, alluding to a similar threat it made in April to launch a nuclear attack on the US.

USA - The National Guard has been deployed to Ferguson, Missouri, following days of civil unrest after the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager. The state's governor Jay Nixon said the additional resources meant a curfew currently in place would be lifted. Michael Brown, 18, was killed by a police officer on 9 August, sparking clashes between police and protesters. An independent autopsy commissioned by his family showed he was shot at least six times, including twice in the head. In a statement, Mr Nixon said he had deployed the National Guard after a "difficult and dangerous night" of violence and looting on the streets of Ferguson. "I join the people of Ferguson, and all Missourians, in strongly condemning the violent acts we saw last night, including the firing upon law enforcement officers, the shooting of a civilian, the throwing of Molotov cocktails, looting and a co-ordinated attempt to overrun the unified Command Centre," he said.

USA - The decision to call on part-time Guard troops to quell riots and protests puts the unrest into the same category as race riots in Los Angeles and unruly Vietnam protests. Any US state governor is entitled to call on the National Guard for help in an emergency, and a US president can also order its troops - part-time soldiers raised within each state - into action. While its deployment to help quell local unrest is not unprecedented, it is typically a measure of last resort - as appears to be the case in Ferguson, the suburb of St Louis, Missouri, that has been torn apart by eight consecutive nights of protests and riots over the police killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old. Missouri's governor, Jay Nixon, said that he had called in the Guard because of "deliberate, coordinated, and intensifyingly violent acts" by the protesters.