EUROPE - The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has come close to destroying the last good reason for Britain to stay in the European Union. Judges in Luxembourg seem no longer willing to uphold the integrity of the EU single market. Or rather, they seem complicit in subverting it. Stripping away a veneer of technicalities, the ECJ has signalled in a test ruling on the Financial Transaction Tax that it will not defend the City of London against assault by eurozone states, who are determined to muscle through their economic ideology, even when in breach of the "Four Freedoms" that have always underpinned the European Project. One of them is free movement of capital within the EU. "They are playing with fire," said Mats Persson, from Open Europe, a body that has been warning for months that this case is a watershed moment for Britain's future in Europe.

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas is whipping up a phony propaganda campaign that accuses Israel of “ethnic purification” of Jerusalem - pushing out Arab residents and replacing them with Jews. His ethnic-cleansing charges about Jerusalem population trends go in tandem with another big Palestinian lie - that Israel is threatening to destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque atop Temple Mount and replace it with a third Jewish temple. Nothing of the sort is true – on both counts. Israel has been scrupulous in maintaining security and access for Al-Aqsa Mosque worshippers, while Arabs actually have flourished and grown in big numbers in Jerusalem.

ISRAEL - The Times of Israel: The Religious Affairs Ministry is crafting new regulations that would allow Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, Deputy Minister Eli Ben Dahan said Tuesday. “We have drafted regulations that will regulate prayer on the mount,” said Ben Dahan, of the nationalist Jewish Home party. “I expect the prime minister and the government of Israel to adopt and validate these regulations and allow all Jews who desire so to go up to the Temple Mount and pray there,” he told a conference of Liba, an organization that encourages Jews to visit the Temple Mount, via video address.

UKRAINE - Police and security service units defect to pro-Russian rebels as more government buildings are taken over in Luhansk and Donetsk. Ukraine's government has lost control of two regions in the country's east after police and security service units defected to pro-Russian rebels, the acting president admitted on Wednesday. Oleksandr Turchynov spoke hours after gunmen seized more police stations and administrative buildings in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the country's industrial heartland and now the centre of a pro-Russian insurgency. "I will be frank: today, security forces are unable to quickly take the situation in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions under control," said Mr Turchynov at a meeting with regional governors in Kiev. He described the Ukrainian security services as "helpless" and "unable to carry out their duties of protecting citizens".

China said on Wednesday it would conduct joint naval drills with Russia in the East China Sea off Shanghai in late May, in what it called a bid to deepen military cooperation. China's defense ministry did not give an exact location in the East China Sea, where Beijing is locked in an increasingly bitter dispute with Japan over the ownership of a group of uninhabited islets. "These drills are regular exercises held by China and Russia's navies, and the purpose is to deepen practical cooperation between the two militaries, to raise the ability to jointly deal with maritime security threats," the ministry said on its website. China and Russia have close diplomatic, security and economic ties, and regularly carry out military exercises together.

USA - The US Federal Reserve has announced a further reduction of its economic stimulus efforts, after a two-day meeting in Washington. The central bank said it would continue trimming its monthly bond-purchases by an additional $10 billion (£5.9 billion) to $45 billion. The bank has been buying bonds to keep long-term interest rates low and stimulate economic activity. Fed chair Janet Yellen said the bank will continue to support the US economy for as long as it deems necessary.

USA - Resistance to antibiotics poses a "major global threat" to public health, says a new report by the World Health Organization (WHO). It analysed data from 114 countries and said resistance was happening now "in every region of the world". It described a "post-antibiotic era", where people die from simple infections that have been treatable for decades.

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL - A Christian minister who was forced off the Temple Mount by Muslim officials has released a video of support for Jewish rights on the Temple Mount, urging Jews and "the children of Abraham" throughout the world to stand together to end Islamist harassment and discriminatory measures on Judaism's holiest site. Pastor Keith Johnson told how he recently visited the holy site in Jerusalem when he bumped into veteran Temple Mount activist Yehuda Glick. But his warm greeting for one of the leaders of the struggle for Jewish prayer rights on the Mount attracted the attention of the Waqf - the Islamic trust which administers the site and has been behind the pressure to continue a ban on non-Muslim worship there.

MIDDLE EAST - Fatah official on TV calls for 'historic solution' of armed struggle; claims all of Israel is 'Palestine.' Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction espouses the same ideology of destroying Israel as Hamas, with which it signed a unity deal last Wednesday, according to newly revealed video segments of a senior Fatah official. Fatah Central Committee member Tawfiq Tirawi last week posted a video to YouTube of his comments from a pro-terrorist ceremony in Gaza. In his speech mere days before the unity deal, Tirawi said Gaza "will return to the bosom of legitimacy." Tirawi added "the homeland… is… all of Palestine, from its Jordan River to its Mediterranean Sea," describing a map that effectively wipes out the Jewish state.

USA - At least 35 people have been killed in tornadoes that ravaged neighbourhoods across six US states and the severe weather was set to continue with forecasters warning of hail the size of baseballs. In hard-hit Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee, at least 17 people were killed on Monday, CNN television said.

USA - Secretary of State John Kerry says he chose the wrong word in describing Israel's potential future after coming under withering criticism for saying the Jewish state could become an "apartheid state" if it doesn't reach a peace deal with the Palestinians.

CHINA - As China boosts its military spending, rattling neighbours over territorial disputes at sea, an AFP investigation shows that European countries have approved billions in transfers of weapons and military-ready technology to the Asian giant. China's air force relies on French-designed helicopters, while submarines and frigates involved in Beijing's physical assertion of its claim to vast swathes of the South China Sea are powered by German and French engines - part of a separate trade in "dual use" technology to Beijing's armed forces.

JERUSALEM, ISRAEL – Right-wing Jewish organizations distributed a leaflet across Jerusalem Monday urging Jews to join an emergency conference to discuss means to secure a Jewish presence inside the al-Aqsa compound. The conference, according to the leaflet, will be held Tuesday at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem to address how to guarantee a Jewish presence inside the holy place and to force Israeli police to open all gates to Jews and allow them to perform Jewish rites freely. The leaflet reads that workshops and panels will be held to listen to suggestions on how to impose “complete Jewish sovereignty on the Temple Mount.” Panelists in the conference include rabbis, Israeli ministers and Knesset members…

UK - Experts say humans are past their peak and that modern-day people are 10 per cent smaller and shorter than their hunter-gatherer ancestors. And if that’s not depressing enough, our brains are also smaller. The findings reverse perceived wisdom that humans have grown taller and larger, a belief which has grown from data on more recent physical development. The decline, said scientists, has happened over the past 10,000 years. They blame agriculture, with restricted diets and urbanisation compromising health and leading to the spread of disease.

UNITED NATIONS - Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, warned world nations on Tuesday that with the Hamas-Fatah unity pact, any funds they transfer to the Palestinian Authority (PA) may end up in the hands of Hamas and be used for carrying out terrorist attacks. “As we speak, millions of dollars are being channeled to the Palestinian Authority. Now that the Palestinians have signed a unity agreement, that funding will be at the disposal of Hamas, an internationally recognized terrorist organization,” Prosor said in a speech before the UN Security Council.