MIDDLE EAST - Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction has launched a full campaign calling for a violent "revolution" against Israel, following the abduction and murder of a young Arab resident of Jerusalem on Wednesday. The murder of Mohammed Abu-Khder (16) has been jumped upon by many claiming it was Jewish "revenge" for the murder of the three Israeli teens, with Arab mobs attacking police and destroying parts of Jerusalem's light rail, causing substantial damage which could take months to fix, and leaving several Jerusalem suburbs without little or no public transport.

UK - The world could be "cast back into the dark ages of medicine" where people die from treatable infections because deadly bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics, David Cameron has warned. The Prime Minister has called for governments and drug companies around the world to work together to "accelerate" the discovery of a new generation of antibiotics. His intervention comes amid fears in the medical profession that manageable illnesses like pneumonia and tuberculosis could kill huge numbers of people like they did early in the twentieth century. About 25,000 people die annually across Europe because of infections that are resistant to antibiotic drugs, Mr Cameron said.

ISRAEL - Palestinian sources cited by Walla reported that Israel has delivered an ultimatum to Hamas to stop rocket fire from Gaza within 48 hours. Otherwise, Israel warned, it intends to launch an attack on Gaza. The sources said that the threat was delivered by Egyptian Intelligence to the head of Hamas's political bureau, Musa Abu Marzuk, who is in Cairo. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said at a Fourth of July reception at the US Ambassador's residence that Israel is preparing for two possibilities. “One – that the fire will stop and then our operations will also stop; and the second, that the fire will continue and then our forces will act forcefully.”

GERMANY - The Bundestag has marked the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War. One hundred delegates from neighboring and partnering countries, most prominently from France, were in attendance. On Thursday morning, members of the German parliament gathered in commemoration of World War One. The president of the Bundestag, Norbert Lammert, opened the service. "What does the First World War have to do with us?" Lammert asked numerous times during his speech. World War One, also known by such names as "The Great War" or "The War to End all Wars," was not so easy to define for Germans, Lammert said, pointing to the catastrophic consequences that the "last conventional and first modern war" had on the country.

UK - UK airports on alert over 'different and disturbing plots to bring down jets' amid fears terrorists are working on an undetectable bomb which could be surgically implanted in the body. Britain's airports are on terror alert amid fears Islamist groups are working on an undetectable 'stealth bomb' which could be implanted inside an extremist's body to bring down an airliner. Heightened precautions were brought in at terminals around the UK this morning after reports that two terror networks are trying to produce a new explosive, which may have already been tested by militants in Syria. It is feared the groups may be putting together a 'non-metallic' device, which could potentially be surgically-implanted inside a terrorist's body and would be almost invisible to current security checks. ABC News quoted a US defence insider as saying the new threat is 'different and more disturbing' than attempted attacks in the past.

CHINA - In its continued push to make the yuan a global currency, China’s central bank said Sunday it plans to designate clearing banks for its currency in Paris and Luxembourg, as the two financial centers battle with London to become the leading European offshore yuan-trading city. The People’s Bank of China announced the move in two separate statements Sunday. It didn’t say when it would designate the clearing banks. The French and Luxembourg central banks said Sunday they had signed agreements with PBOC allowing for greater cooperation in the oversight of their domestic yuan market. The weekend moves are the latest salvos in the race to win a major share of business in cross-border transactions in the Chinese currency.

UK - One of the Grand Narratives of our era is the substitution of debt for income: as earned income and disposable income have stagnated for 40 years, the gap between the rising cost of living and stagnant household income has been filled by borrowed money.

USA - The US government is militarizing social media through a combination of technology and social sciences, and Facebook is helping them. There has been quite a bit of chatter this past week after it was revealed that a recent Facebook outage was the result of a psychological experiment that the company conducted on a portion of its users without their permission. The experiment, which was described in a paper published by Facebook, and UCSF, tested the contagion of emotions on social media by manipulating the content of personal feeds and measuring how this impacted user behavior.

USA - A controversial scientist who carried out provocative research on making influenza viruses more infectious has completed his most dangerous experiment to date by deliberately creating a pandemic strain of flu that can evade the human immune system. Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison has genetically manipulated the 2009 strain of pandemic flu in order for it to “escape” the control of the immune system’s neutralising antibodies, effectively making the human population defenceless against its reemergence. There are many examples of other infectious agents escaping from labs. Smallpox virus escaped from Birmingham Medical School in 1978 and killed a medical photographer, Janet Parker, the last person to die of smallpox. Foot and mouth virus escaped in 2007 from a veterinary lab in Surrey and in 2004 the SARS virus escaped from a high-containment lab in Beijing, infecting nine people before it was stopped.

USA - Virtually all of the food imported into the United States reaches consumers without being inspected by the federal government, putting the nation at risk of exposure to food-borne illnesses. An investigation by FairWarning and Investigative News Network (INN) found that Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspectors allow nearly all food imports to enter the country without undergoing visual examination. “The FDA has been outgunned and overmatched for years as a rising tide of imported food has found a place at the US dinner table,” FairWarning’s Rick Schmitt wrote. “Because of budget constraints ordinarily only 1 percent to 2 percent of food imports are physically inspected by the agency at the border each year.”

EUROPE - In a grotesque parody of a ceremony of a nation state, yesterday the European Parliament opened the new session of the assembly with a flag-raising carried out by soldiers of the Eurocorps – sometimes known as the Eurokorps – a 1,000-strong embryo EU army. Eight soldiers marched carrying a giant EU flag, which was raised to a military salute. A military band played what the EU elite want people to believe is “Europe’s national anthem,” but which in fact has no legal standing as an anthem and is merely a theme tune borrowed from Beethoven’s 9th symphony. Once it was raised, the EU flag stood at the front of and dwarfed the smaller flags of the 28 member states.

MIDDLE EAST - Muslims have been called to flock to the 'Islamic State' to gather for a battle against non-believers throughout the world. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed leader of the 'Islamic State' stretching across Iraq and Syria, has vowed to lead the conquest of Rome as he called on Muslims to immigrate to his new land to fight under its banner around the globe.

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - Israel is the most contested piece of real estate in the world. And the most contested piece of real estate within Israel is the Temple Mount in the old city of Jerusalem. Nearly every Jew believes that the Muslim Dome of the Rock, which dominates that thirty-six acre site, sits on the spot of all previous Jewish Temples, including the last one destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. Many Jews and Christians believe that the temple must be and will be rebuilt on that spot. Therein lies the problem. Can you think of a faster way to start World War III?

UK - A British jihadist fighting in Syria has signalled that the UK should be afraid of the terror skills he has learnt after posting a photo of apparently homemade bombs. A Twitter account believed to belong to Nasser Muthana, 20, shows an image of a stack of improvised explosive devices in a garage. Alongside it is the stark warning: "So the UK is afraid I come back with the skills I've gained." Muthana, from Cardiff, appeared in a recruitment video for the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (Isis), last month. He describes himself as a "soldier of the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham" on his Twitter profile and explains his beliefs as based on "a book that guides and a sword that supports it".

ARGENTINA - Argentina is poised to miss a bond payment today, putting the country on the brink of its second default in 13 years, after a US court blocked the cash from being distributed until the government settles with creditors from the previous debt debacle. The nation has a 30-day grace period after missing the $539 million debt payment to seek an accord with a group of defaulted bondholders led by billionaire Paul Singer’s NML Capital Ltd and prevent a default on its $28.7 billion of performing global dollar bonds. While both Argentina and NML have said that they’re open to talks, public comments signal little progress has been made so far.