MIDDLE EAST - More cartoons in official PA paper, Fatah Facebook page, rejoice over kidnapping of three teenagers. In an odious distortion of the World Cup 2014 logo, the official Palestinian Authority daily printed Sunday a cartoon celebrating the kidnapping of three Israeli youths on Thursday night. Instead of the famous logo of the World Cup 2014, in which three victorious hands hold the globe, together creating the prestigious trophy, the PA cartoon shows a "trophy" of three hands holding three people with their hands up in surrender. Instead of the text "Brasil" below the "trophy," the word "Khalil" is written – Arabic for Hevron, a city near where the Israeli youths were kidnapped. The sickening cartoon illustrates the mixed messages sent by the PA; on the one hand, Abbas promised to help Israel find the abducted teens – even as a senior PA official denied his administration would take any responsibility for the kidnappings.

RUSSIA - Russia threatened to cut off Ukraine's gas later on Monday after the two sides failed to strike a deal that would have saved Europe from supply disruptions, stoking the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War. Ukraine hosted the last-gasp talks hoping to avoid an energy crisis compounding the new pro-Western leaders' problems as they confront a two-month separatist insurgency threatening the very survival of their ex-Soviet state. But a top official from Russia's state gas firm Gazprom said that the EU-brokered talks that stretched through the night had failed to bridge the two sides' acrimonious disagreement over price and how much debt Kiev exactly owed Moscow. "If we receive no pre-payment by 10:00 am (0600GMT), then we obviously will deliver no gas."

KENYA - Gunmen flying the flag of Somalia’s al-Qaeda affiliate roared into a Kenyan coastal town and opened fire indiscriminately on pedestrians, shop-owners and people watching the World Cup, leaving at least 48 people dead. Two banks, government buildings and a dozen vehicles were set alight as the Islamist attackers worked their way through the town of Mpeketoni, close to Lamu island, until Kenyan forces repelled them hours later. It was the boldest raid inside Kenya blamed on al-Shabaab since the terror strike against the Westgate Shopping Centre in the capital, Nairobi, last September, when more than 70 people died. Britain has advised tourists to avoid areas of Kenya's coast south of where the attack took place, including Mombasa island.

UK - Britain’s obesity crisis is so serious that hospitals are buying specialist equipment to keep bodies cool because they are too large to fit into mortuary fridges. Hospitals are also having to widen corridors, buy reinforced beds and lifting equipment in order to cope with the growing numbers of obese patients coming though their doors. Figures obtained by The Telegraph show that hospitals have spent at least £5.5 million over the past three years on adaptations to allow them to treat larger patients. Experts now warn the cost of treating overweight and obese patients could rise to at least £10 million a year as the nation's waistlines continue expanding. A quarter of adults in the UK are estimated to be obese and the number is expected to grow to account for more than half of the population in the next 30 years.

FRANCE - The EU should adopt a single foreign policy and back it up with a pan-European army that excludes the UK, France's former defence minister said last night. Charles Millon, who served under Prime Minster Alain Juppe, urged Brussels to abandon Nato and appease Russian premier Vladimir Putin instead. In a scathing attack on the transatlantic alliance, Mr Millon poured scorn on Washington's influence over Europe, claiming that abandoning Nato would prevent the EU from "bowing to US policy" which does not necessarily line up with its interests.

USA - An international conference of ecumenists concluded at Fairfield University in the US on Thursday with the signing of a covenant committing participants to the continued search for unity and reconciliation between all the Christian churches. Philippa Hitchen was at the conference and sent this report: This third Receptive Ecumenism conference was billed as a kind of ‘coming of age’ party for a movement born almost a decade ago at Durham’s Centre for Catholic Studies in the north of England. Based on the premise that partners in dialogues should discover what gifts they could receive from the other’s way of being and doing church, the idea was eagerly picked up by ecumenists struggling to recapture the energy and vision of the post Vatican II period.

USA - A dangerous “superbug” has made its way into the North American food supply for the first time, Canadian researchers announced Wednesday. Routine testing of raw squid, imported from South Korea, revealed a strain of bacteria resistant to carbapenems, a class of antibiotics used to treat life-threatening infections. This is concerning because carbapenems are a “last resort” antibiotic, one doctors turn to when common antibiotics fail. Health officials have been watching them closely; in April, the World Health Organization warned that antibiotic resistance had become a serious, global threat to public health, listing the spread of carbapanem resistance as a main reason for that.

UK - A tax on fizzy drinks, government targets to reduce sugar and advertising restrictions on processed foods are among a series of measures being suggested by the public health watchdog to help tackle rising levels of sugar consumption. The Telegraph has seen a document commissioned by Public Health England that contains several possible actions to reduce sugar in food and drink. The paper, which was discussed at a meeting between the quango and industry representatives this month, warns that coronary heart disease, strokes and cancer are the UK’s “leading killers”, partly driven by high blood pressure and excess weight — both of which have been linked to high sugar consumption. However, the food and drink industry is alarmed by the severity of some of the options in the document. It insists the causes of obesity are “far wider” than sugar and warns that a tax would hit the poorest families hardest.

VATICAN - Pope Francis has launched a scathing attack on the global economic system, warning it is near collapse because of a 'throwaway culture' of greed and the 'atrocity' of youth unemployment. The Roman Catholic leader openly blasted the 'idolatrous' economy for disregarding the young, which he says has led to shocking levels of youth unemployment and will lead to a lost generation. The 77-year-old also criticised the economy - which he said had 'fallen into a sin of idolatry, the idolatry of money' - for surviving on the profits of war.

EUROPE - With the increasing economic failures of Europe’s 38 member union, suffering from a combination of failed austerity, record low interest rates, mixed with debt-incurring government spending, political murmurs are rife with its eventual impact on the life of the European Union itself.

IRAQ - Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces helped Iraqi troops regain control over most of Tikrit, according to Iranian security sources. Confronted by the threat of Sunni Muslim forces overtaking Shiite-dominated Iraq, Iran responded to aid its Arab ally and sent Revolutionary Guard fighters to Iraq, according to Iranian security sources. At least three battalions of the Quds Forces, the elite overseas branch of the Guards, were deployed to support the fight against ISIL, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, an offshoot of al Qaeda that is swiftly conquering territory across Iraq, they said. One Guards unit that was already in Iraq fought alongside the Iraqi army, offering guerrilla warfare advice and tactics that helped reclaim most of the city of Tikrit on Thursday. The advances of an al Qaeda-affiliated group gaining support, supplies and territory presents Iran with its biggest security and strategic threat since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

IRAQ - Spectacular advances by Jihadi forces across northern Iraq have raised the spectre of a Sunni-Shia conflagration in the heart of the Middle East, triggering a surge in oil prices and throwing into doubt the structure of global energy supply for the next decade. Brent crude jumped above $113 a barrel as the self-described Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) raced down the Tigris Valley towards Baghdad with sophisticated weaponry, seizing on its momentum after the historic capture of Mosul. Oil prices are approaching levels last seen during the Arab Spring.

IRAQ - Iraq is breaking up. The Kurds have taken the northern oil city of Kirkuk that they have long claimed as their capital. Sunni fundamentalist fighters vow to capture Baghdad and the Shia holy cities further south. Government rule over the Sunni Arab heartlands of north and central Iraq is evaporating as its 900,000-strong army disintegrates. Government aircraft have fired missiles at insurgent targets in Mosul, captured by Isis on Monday, but the Iraqi army has otherwise shown no sign of launching a counter-attack. The nine-year Shia dominance over Iraq, established after the US, Britain and other allies overthrew Saddam Hussein, may be coming to an end. The Shia may continue to hold the capital and the Shia-majority provinces further south, but they will have great difficulty in re-establishing their authority over Sunni provinces from which their army has fled.

MIDDLE EAST - So after the grotesquerie of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 suicide killers of 9/11, meet Saudi Arabia’s latest monstrous contribution to world history: the Islamist Sunni caliphate of Iraq and the Levant, conquerors of Mosul and Tikrit – and Raqqa in Syria – and possibly Baghdad, and the ultimate humiliators of Bush and Obama. From Aleppo in northern Syria almost to the Iraqi-Iranian border, the jihadists of Isis and sundry other groupuscules paid by the Saudi Wahhabis – and by Kuwaiti oligarchs – now rule thousands of square miles.

VATICAN - The Pope today appeared to raise concerns about Scottish independence for the first time in a surprise intervention that could exert a major influence on the votes of the country’s 840,000 Catholics. Speaking in an interview with a Spanish newspaper about Catalonia's conflict with Spain, the Pontiff said "all division" worried him and cited Scotland as another example of an independence movement. Pope Francis suggested the break-up of Yugoslavia was justifiable because the cultures that made up that country were so diverse they "couldn’t even be stuck together with glue". But he told the Barcelona-based La Vanguardia newspaper that in other cases, such as Scotland and Catalonia: "I ask myself if it is so clear". The Union between England and Scotland is 307 years old.