USA - Authorities are trying to determine what caused tens of thousands of fish to turn up dead in the waters off Marina del Rey over the weekend. The first report came in just after 9 pm Saturday at the A-Basin in the 13000 block of Tahiti Way, officials said. When Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department deputies arrived, they discovered an estimated 70,000 dead anchovies floating in the water, along with other sea life, including sting rays and angel sharks. On Sunday afternoon, workers hauled away about 175 garbage bags worth of fish, weighing an estimated 7,000 pounds.

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - A plan by Pope Francis to celebrate mass in a Jerusalem room believed by Christians to have hosted the Last Supper has brought criticism, controversy and conspiracy theories worthy of a Dan Brown novel. The pope’s first official visit to the Holy Land this month was meant to showcase interfaith tolerance and the improved ties between Israel and the Holy See. But the plan to hold mass in the room, known as the Cenacle, has sparked an ugly disagreement that is threatening to undermine the visit.

EUROPE - Europe is bracing itself for a howl of rage. Populists promise to steal the show in elections to the European Parliament next week. Unashamedly anti-EU parties – mostly of the extreme right, but joined by a handful from the left – may well garner 30 per cent of the vote. The result will probably be read as a damning verdict on European integration. This is a mistake. The mistake is to see these parties as resembling a homogeneous group. They may now be marching under the same eurosceptic banner, but, as narrow-minded nationalists, they have little inclination to collaborate. Some, as in Golden Dawn and Jobbik, are unreconstructed fascists. Ms Le Pen downplays her party’s antisemitic heritage to promote a racist islamophobia. All of this will make life in the region unpleasant and unstable. That's disconcerting, as is the prospect of far-right political parties winning close to a quarter of the vote in a long list of European countries.

EUROPE - Anti-Semitism is still prevalent in Germany with some 19 million adults harbouring negative sentiments towards Jews, according to a new study. The Anti-Defamation League's Global 100 Index found that 27 per cent of German adults answered 'probably' or 'definitely' true to six or more of 11 stereotypes about Jews in the survey. The finding places Germany - which has an adult population of around 69 million - among the countries with the highest levels of anti-Semitism in western Europe. Austria (28%), Spain (29%), France (37%) and Greece (69%) were higher.

GIBRALTAR - The deployment of additional sailors to the Rock will, sources say, allow the Royal Navy to operate patrol boats 24 hours a day, and man fast-moving Rigid Inflatable Boats to challenge nighttime incursions by Spanish fishing trawlers. It follows a public commitment by Europe minster David Lidington that Whitehall would “rule out no option” in upholding British sovereignty over the overseas territory and its waters. Last night senior Royal Navy sources also confirmed the additional personnel would include more electronic eavesdropping specialists to meet the challenge of Spain’s decision to allow Russian warships to refuel at its North African territory, Ceuta.

GERMANY - Gunther Krichbaum, one of German chancellor Angela Merkel's closet allies, has poured cold water on Mr Cameron's hope of achieving his stated desire of EU reform. Mr Krichbaum, head of the country's committee on EU affairs, was backed by other senior German politicians. Last week, Mr Cameron said he would insist on the UK no longer being bound by the EU's principle of "ever closer union" – one of the core principles of its rulebook. However Mr Krichbaum, a Christian Democrat, told Mr Cameron that other EU countries would not agree to his demand.

EUROPE - Everything is weird about this week’s Euro-election, and nothing weirder than the possibility that the party that comes top of the poll will be one that hasn’t got a single seat in Parliament. Our other parliament, in Brussels and Strasbourg, plays an important part in producing a huge proportion of the laws we must all obey. Yet on Thursday we shall only be choosing a bunch of unknown nonentities to represent us there, commanding just 9 per cent of the votes that can pass or reject those laws – and, hardly surprisingly, the majority of the British electorate will not even bother to turn out to vote for something they don’t begin to understand.

CHINA - China is stockpiling oil for its strategic petroleum reserve at a record pace, intervening on a scale large enough to send a powerful pulse through the world crude market. The move comes as tensions mount in the South China Sea, and the West prepares possible oil sanctions against Russia over the crisis in Eastern Ukraine. Analysts believe China is quietly building up buffers against a possible spike in oil prices or disruptions in supply. The International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its latest monthly report that China imported 6.81 million barrels a day in April, an all-time high. This is raising eyebrows since China’s economy has been slowing for months, with slump conditions in the steel industry and a sharp downturn in new construction.

ISRAEL - Hundreds of Palestinians attending the funerals of two Palestinians on Friday rioted and clashed with Israeli security forces near the Beitunia checkpoint, north of Jerusalem. The two Palestinians had been shot dead on Thursday when demonstrators clashed with Israeli security forces during a "Nakba Day" protest marking the "catastrophe" of Israel's inception. Riots also erupted on the Temple Mount on Friday after the weekly prayer services, as dozens of Arab youths clashed with Israeli security forces stationed at the volatile holy site.

TEMPLE MOUNT, ISRAEL - Member of Knesset Issawi Farij (Meretz) sharply attacked Secretary-General Hilik Bar of the Labor Party, Sunday, after Bar expressed support for a bill by Likud Beytenu Knesset member Miri Regev to regulate Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City. Farij said Bar's "populist statement ignores the explosiveness of the site and the inherent dangers" in the proposal, citing steps by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during his first term and afterward by then opposition leader Ariel Sharon in 2000. Calling the status quo of Muslims praying on the Temple Mount and Jews praying at the Western Wall the key to preserving quiet, he called Bar's support a "dangerous provocation" reserved until now for "Regev and her friends," and cited Labor leadership for not condemning it.

TEMPLE MOUNT, ISRAEL - The Jewish people will be allowed to pray freely at their holiest site, Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, according to a controversial bill proposed by Labor MK and former Jerusalem city councilman Hilik Bar. Bar, who sponsored the bill together with Likud MK Miri Regev, wants prayer for Jews to be legalized and set in a way that would not harm the Muslim religious Wakf and would be sensitive to Islam.

EUROPE - The European Union must pull closer collectively and establish a powerful military presence, so it can act as a ​"​moral anchor​"​ to the United States, the economist Kenneth Rogoff has warned. Speaking ahead of next week​'​s European elections, Mr Rogoff, a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, stated the EU really should strive to grow to be additional ​"​like a single country​"​.

GERMANY - Helmut Schmidt, 95, claimed the crisis in Ukraine is "increasingly comparable" to the period leading up to the 1914-1918 Great War. And he blamed the European Commission and NATO for seriously misreading the worst East-West tension since the end of the Cold War. "I think very little of talking up the threat of World War III, and especially of demands for more money to arm NATO," he told German newspaper Bild. "But the danger that the situation gets ever more tense, as it did in August 1914, is growing day by day."

GERMANY - Former German chancellor Helmut Kohl, deemed the father of national reunification, on Thursday urged closer EU integration and warned that "Europe remains a question of war and peace". In a rare interview ahead of May 22-25 European parliamentary elections Kohl, one of the key architects of the continent's push toward unity, also said Europe must be "a matter of the heart" for its people.

USA - Speaking at a gathering of local atheists, humanists, freethinkers and other nontheists in a chemistry lecture hall at Stanford University, David Silverman, president of American Atheists, a national advocacy group for nontheists, announced Tuesday (May 6) that his New Jersey-based organization would launch the first television channel dedicated to atheism in July. “Why are we going to television?” he asked the audience, a mix of about 100 students and people from the local community. “It’s part of our strategy of going where we are not.” Silverman, 49, said the television channel, which will be available via Roku, an Internet streaming player that attaches to televisions like a cable box, will run atheist content seven days a week, 24 hours a day. He estimated it will reach 7 million households and will be free, at least initially.