USA - A shallow magnitude 3.0 earthquake that was centered near Hollywood and shook parts of the Los Angeles basin Saturday morning was the third temblor to hit the area in the last two weeks. The latest quake occurred at 10:13 am at a depth of 5.0 miles and was felt from the Westside to East Los Angeles, said Anthony Guarino, a seismologist at Caltech. The region remains overdue for a massive quake. The southern section of the San Andreas Fault, which starts near the Salton Sea and runs north to Palmdale, has historically caused a large earthquake every 150 years on average. It has not ruptured since 1680. “There is a very high probability that it will rupture in our lifetime or our children’s lifetime,” Guarino said.

CANADA - Spending hours playing violent video games stunts teenagers' emotional growth, a study has found. It is thought that regular exposure to violence and lack of contact with the outside world makes it harder for them to tell right from wrong. They also struggle to trust other people, and see the world from their perspective.

UK - Several water gauges along the River Thames have measured record levels as flood waters continue to rise. Fourteen severe flood warnings are in place along a stretch of the river in Berkshire and Surrey, with police warning 2,500 Surrey homes are at risk. The Environment Agency is also warning of rising water in the Somerset Levels. The Environment Agency's 14 severe warnings - meaning "danger to life" - are for areas in and around Staines, Egham, Chertsey and Datchet. National Rail said the River Thames had flooded at several locations between Staines and Windsor & Eton Riverside stations early on Monday. Trains in the area are cancelled. The main rail route into Devon and Cornwall via Bridgwater remains cut off by problems caused by flooding and storm damage.

UK - Consumers are being sold food including mozzarella that is less than half real cheese, ham on pizzas that is either poultry or "meat emulsion", and frozen prawns that are 50% water, according to tests by a public laboratory.

UK - Bank of England officials told currency traders it wasn’t improper to share impending customer orders with counterparts at other firms, a practice at the heart of a widening probe into alleged market manipulation, according to a person who has seen notes turned over to regulators.

CHINA - John Mearsheimer recently argued that China is pursuing in Asia what the United States has in Latin America: regional hegemony. In pursuit of that goal, China keeps trying to take territory, bit by bit, in the East and South China Seas. And the United States doesn’t know what to do about it.

UK - A group of Britons waging jihad in Syria have threatened to carry out terror attacks in the UK. The extremists warned of atrocities on London’s public transport, at financial centres and also at the White House in the US.

USA - Many of China’s wealthy are fleeing their home country and settling in the United States, where better schools and other opportunities await. The 2012 Annual Report of Chinese International Migration shows immigration from China is growing, with most heading to the US. Nearly 90,000 Chinese became permanent US residents in 2011. The United Nations reported last year that the number of foreign-born Chinese Americans in the US doubled between 2000 and 2010. There are about 3.8 million Chinese in the country, of which 2.2 million were born in China.

NETHERLANDS - With stem cell technology constantly advancing, the dream of artificial (or synthetic) gametes comes ever closer. Last September Maastricht University, in the Netherlands, hosted a conference on “Artificial Gametes: Science and Ethics”. The creation of artificial gametes would represent the triumph of technology over the limitations of natural reproduction. Now that it seems feasible to coax adult cells into reverting to a pluripotent state, women could make sperm and men could make eggs. Eventually it might be possible to make bespoke gametes from any tissue samples.

UK - The Environment Agency put water voles, greater water parsnips, silver diving beetles and large marsh grasshoppers ahead of people in the flood-ravaged Somerset Levels, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. A 250-page agency document issued in 2008 shows that years of neglecting vital dredging which used to let water drain away much faster is part of a deliberate policy to increase flooding in the areas now worst affected. The policy was revealed as agency director of operations David Jordan angered residents yesterday by calling the flood defences a ‘success story’.

IRAN - A senior Iranian naval commander says his country has sent several warships to the Atlantic Ocean, close to US maritime borders for the first time. The commander of Iran's Northern Navy Fleet, Admiral Afshin Rezayee Haddad, is quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying Saturday that the vessels have already begun the journey to the Atlantic Ocean via waters near South Africa. Haddad says the fleet is approaching US maritime borders for the first time. The Islamic Republic considers the move as a response to US naval deployments near its own coastlines. The US Navy's 5th fleet is based in nearby Bahrain.

JAPAN - TEPCO has revised the readings on the radioactivity levels at the Fukushima Number 1 nuclear plant well to 5 million becquerels of strontium per liter – both a record, and nearly five times higher than the original reading of 900,000 becquerels per liter. Strontium-90 is a radioactive isotope of strontium produced by nuclear fission with a half-life of 28.8 years. The legal standard for strontium emissions is 30 becquerels per liter. Exposure to strontium-90 can cause bone cancer, cancer of nearby tissues, and leukemia.

USA - Benjamin Wittes of the Brooking Institution has become the go-to non-government NSA apologist. One of his most recent articles is a true work of rhetorical artistry, in which he tries to explain why saying "the NSA doesn't spy on Americans" is acceptable shorthand for the fact that the NSA spies on pretty much every American. It's a master class in political doubletalk. It's the law's fault. The law, you see, is too complicated for mere mortals not working for the NSA to understand, so that makes it okay to lie: The law is so dense and so complicated that it cannot be accurately summarized at a level a citizen can reasonably process.

NETHERLANDS - The average Dutch household could be better off by over £8,000 a year and national income will grow by over £1 trillion if the Netherlands leaves the euro and the EU, according to a new study. The study by the respected British Capital Economics research consultancy into "Nexit" - as a potential exit by the Netherlands has been termed - finds significant benefits over the next two decades if the country swaps its EU membership for a status similar to Switzerland or Norway. "Any decision to leave the EU is first and foremost a social, cultural and political one. It must revolve around issues of national sovereignty, citizenship and freedom of determination," the report found.

EUROPE - Eurozone banks are facing a new capital black hole of as much as €50 billion (£42 billion), according to one of the UK’s most respected financial analysts. Davide Serra, the chief executive of Algebris, who advises the Government on banking, said that this year’s stress tests by the European Banking Authority and the European Central Bank were likely to find fresh problems in the eurozone banks. He said that Germany had one of “the worst banking systems in the world” and that three or four regional Landesbanken were likely to be wound up.