UK - A Leadership challenge against Theresa May appears imminent following her Brexit manifesto, it has been revealed, with letters calling for a no-confidence vote in the Prime Minister piling up. Letters are being lodged with Graham Brady, Chairman of the influential 1922 Committee, ahead of a Tory Party showdown on Monday. The fallout comes amid mounting fury from disgruntled Conservative backbenchers following publication of Mrs May’s 12-point Brexit manifesto.

GERMANY - Markus Söder, 51, Bavaria’s noisy new premier, got out of his car, complimented a woman in a dirndl [traditional Bavarian feminine dress], patted a couple of police horses, threw some sound bites about border security at the cameras, then strode into the beer tent to address the people of Baierbrunn, a small village near Munich. “If Germany is strong, it’s because Bavaria is strong,” Mr Söder intoned from the stage in his Frankish lilt, to approving cheers. “And because we’re strong,” he roared over more cheers, “we take the liberty to have an opinion!”

UK - A majority of the British public want a general election if Tory plotters oust Theresa May and replace her with one of her rivals, a poll has revealed. More than half of those questioned in the exclusive BMG survey for The Independent said the Conservatives could not switch leaders without returning to the country.

EUROPE - The Catholic church is being used as a pawn in a well-orchestrated plan to radically alter the Christian identity of European nations through mass migration, said Bishop Athanasius Schneider in a bombshell interview last week. Schneider, who serves as auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, told the Italian daily Il Giornale that the current migrant crisis “represents a plan orchestrated and prepared for a long time by international powers to radically alter the Christian and national identity of the peoples of Europe.” The bishop said he would applaud the government of any European nation that “tries to accentuate its own sovereignty and its historical, cultural, and Christian identity in the face of the totalitarianism of a sort of new Soviet Union, which today is called the European Union and has an unmistakably Masonic ideology.”

MIDDLE EAST - Hamas has increased its training in preparation for a possible conflict with Israel, defense officials warned on Sunday. According to a report by Israeli public broadcaster Kan, Hamas has upped training of its forces ahead of a possible conflict with Israel, which recently deployed Iron Dome batteries throughout southern Israel.

FRANCE - It has been four years since this French school banned the use of cell phones – and while some people might have expected negative backlash, the students and teachers are quite happy with the regulation. According to The Guardian, the 290 teenager pupils at La Gautrais Middle School in Plouasne have displayed “more social interaction between children, more empathy and a readiness to learn at the start of lessons”.

UK - Books will soon need "trigger warnings" because some students do not like being faced with ugly truths, according to author Julian Barnes. The Man Booker Prize winner made the suggestion after hearing that some undergraduates had taken to criticising Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary on the basis of the protagonist’s behaviour.

USA - The Latest on Southern California’s heat wave - Temperature records are beginning to fall as a heat wave broils Southern California. The National Weather Service says downtown Los Angeles broke the July 6 record when it hit 95 degrees (35 Celsius) at 10:15 am Friday, besting the old record of 94 (34.4 Celsius) set in 1992. The mercury continues to rise and is flirting with the century mark. Downtown is forecast to top out at 106. Other locations around Southern California reached triple digits at midmorning, and several other records have been broken.

UK - Britain is basking in the glow of a prolonged heatwave that looks destined to stick around for at least another week. Indeed, the country has already had two months of hot, bright, record-breaking weather. The UK has been treated to the sunniest early summer since Met Office records began, racking up 486 hours of sunshine in May and June. May was particularly impressive, with the hottest temperatures since 1910. The previous high was set back in 1992 - before then, 1919.  June wasn’t bad either, with the hottest temperatures since 1940, and relatively little rainfall. 

UK - Boris Johnson has resigned from Theresa May's Cabinet as the Prime Minister's Brexit crisis continues to worsen. Late last night Mrs May's Brexit minister David Davis also threw in the towel in protests at her Brexit policy. Downing Street said: “This afternoon, the Prime Minister accepted the resignation of Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary. His replacement will be announced shortly. The Prime Minister thanks Boris for his work.” Leading members of both parties were quick to react to the shock resignation. Mr Davis and Mr Johnson, two of the strongest critics of a soft Brexit, have now quit the Cabinet in the space of 16 hours. 

UK - Theresa May is on the brink of disaster today after David Davis dramatically quit saying he could not back her 'weak' Brexit plan as it 'gives too much away' to the EU. The Prime Minister faces the biggest fight of her political life as a massive backlash from Eurosceptics threatens to sweep her out of Downing Street. In an excoriating verdict on the 'third way' trade plan Mrs May forced through Cabinet on Friday night, Mr Davis said she had persistently undermined him and put the UK on track to be humbled by Brussels. 

GERMANY - For many years German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been regarded, with reason, as the most powerful woman in the world. Over the past few months, Merkel’s authority has diminished precipitously, however, mainly due to her irrational immigration policy. That much became obvious at last weekend’s emergency EU summit on immigration. The meeting was hastily convened at Merkel’s insistence to develop a joint European strategy to deal with the ongoing migrant onslaught. In reality, it was meant to be “Operation Save Mutti”: a means of preventing her government’s collapse by showing that the Union can develop a tougher immigration strategy.

GERMANY - German media has been banned from reporting on a Muslim migrant who allegedly beheaded his one-year-old baby daughter in Hamburg. Angela Merkel’s pro-migrant government has banned German media from reporting on a barbaric crime involving a Muslim migrant who allegedly beheaded his one-year-old baby daughter on a train station platform in Hamburg.

GERMANY - If it was indeed the authorities' plan to censor the news and keep the information of the beheading under wraps, then it backfired. Due to the reports about the raid, thousands of people have seen the video, and hundreds of thousands have heard about the botched censorship attempt. Hamburg's government is still trying to conceal the beheading. Among other things, they [the AfD party] wanted to know whether the child had been beheaded. The administration - in breach of its constitutional duty - refused to answer. It also censored the questions by blacking out whole sentences.

NORTH KOREA - Disarmament talks between the US and North Korea ended in Pyongyang on Saturday with the North Korean regime accusing Washington of a “gangster-like mindset” and warning of “yet another tragedy” if negotiations collapse. The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, responded that if the US was a gangster, so was the whole world, as it had the same demand that North Korea dismantle its nuclear weapons programme. He insisted sanctions would remain in place until Pyongyang completed disarmament. Pyongyang, however, made clear it had no intention of carrying out the comprehensive unilateral disarmament Donald Trump has claimed was the outcome of his 12 June summit in Singapore with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un.