Dan Roberts in the Guardian's CiF.

France threatens to leave the euro. German savers hoard gold. The Bundesbank works on a plan B to restore the Deutsche Mark. It's fair to say even a $1 trillion bailout hasn't been enough to stop the rumour mill dogging the European single currency this week.

Telegraph report.

President Nicolas Sarkozy slammed his fist on the table and threatened to pull France out of the euro at a meeting of European leaders deciding Greece's aid package last Friday, according to Spain's El Pais newspaper.

Craig Murray writes.

[...] no amount of googling brings up any British mainstream media mention of the fact that whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu has just been jailed again in Israel. This is for breaching the terms of a military edict - not a court order - restricting his movements and contacts.

Josie Appleton on the Guardian's CiF.

A Manifesto Club survey found that people in their late 20s and 30s are being routinely checked not just for buying alcohol, but also for attempting to purchase items such as barbecue skewers, bleach, paracetamol, UHU glue, matches, cigarette papers, even a "gentleman's manicure set".

[...]

Challenging this culture of ID checking is as crucial as taking on the ID card scheme itself. As free citizens we should not have to produce our papers at the local supermarket. We must assert again our right to pass.

Edmund Conway on his Telegraph blog.

Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, fears that America shares many of the same fiscal problems currently haunting Europe. He also believes that European Union must become a federalised fiscal union (in other words with central power to tax and spend) if it is to survive. Just two of the nuggets from one of the most extraordinary press conferences I have been to at the Bank.

Al-Manar report.

High-ranking sources in the Israeli Foreign Ministry expressed displeasure with Turkey over deploying anti-aircraft batteries along the Syrian border in the Iskenderun district.

The Turkish daily Hurriyet meanwhile, quoted a military source as saying that "this move aims at repelling a US or Israeli attack against Iran or Syria."

Craig Murray writes. The Fisk article is here.

Robert Fisk's impeccable Arab sources strongly suspect, with good evidence, that Britain colluded in the murder in Dubai of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. I have been working my own British sources since seeing Fisk's article in February.

This morning I can say that information has reached me that confirms that Fisk is right and these were not forged British passports, but real British passports given to Mossad by MI6. But my source cautions that you cannot conclude from that, that they were given for the purposes of this particular operation, or of assassination in general. The provision or exchange of blank passports between "friendly" intelligence agancies is not an uncommon practice.

Hillary Mann Leverett in Politico.

Sorting this out must start with sober recognition of an essential truth: America's war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan was not, is not and will never be Karzai's war.

Americans are not entitled to feel affronted when Karzai does not meet our expectations of him as a "wartime ally" -- whether in combating opium cultivation and trafficking, pursuing "good governance," advancing women's rights or building a genuinely national Afghan army and national security apparatus. None is a high priority for him.

John Lettice reports in Teh Register.

Second-generation biometric passports will be scrapped alongside ID cards and the National Identity Register by the new Tory-LibDem government, probably as part of a merger between the LibDem Freedom Bill, and the Great Repeal Bill advocated by some sections of the Tory party. It isn't as yet entirely clear what will be in this Bill, but there is sufficient common ground between the two parties for it to be one of the easier tasks for the new government.

Fox News report.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused members of the Pakistani government over the weekend of practically harboring Usama bin Laden, raising questions about whether the U.S. is pushing hard enough on its presumed ally to give up the world's most wanted terrorist.

Paul Chambers describes his ordeal on the Guardian's CiF.

The reason for the arrest was a tweet I had posted on the social network Twitter, which was deemed to constitute a bomb threat against Robin Hood airport in Doncaster: "Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!" You may say, and I certainly realise now, it was ill-advised. But it was clearly frustration, caused by heavy snowfall grounding flights and potentially scuppering my own flight a week later. Like having a bad day at work and stating that you could murder your boss, I didn't even think about whether it would be taken seriously.

Richard Godwin in the Evening Standard.

If I were to use this column to announce my intention to nail-bomb the London Aquarium, would you think I was serious?

Well, I am. I have had it up to here with the sharks who live in the main tank there. Stupid hammerhead bastards. They have been annoying me long enough, with their nasty little gills, their beady little eyes. I intend to teach them a lesson they will never forget, a lesson involving nails and bombs.

[...]

The case naturally raises troubling legal questions about social media sites. Also about how many exclamation marks signal a joke (two is not enough, clearly!!!).

From Middle East Online.

Rice's record as National Security Advisor is devastatingly attacked by CIA Director George Tenet and Counter-Terrorism chief Richard Clarke. They reveal how she ignored scores of warnings in the spring and summer of 2001 that an Al Qaeda attack was imminent.

[...]

Richard Clarke, chief counter-terrorism adviser between 1992-2003 concurred: "Rice decided what torture to use on what person."

"American Faust" reveals that the techniques that Rice approved went far beyond the mock executions and water-boarding already made public. Our film has first-hand accounts of torture techniques that make stress positions look like a slap on the wrist.

Olivia Hampton on the Guardian's CiF.

But don't be fooled by appearances. Tensions are still boiling just below the surface. For all the pomp and circumstance of the four-day visit by the Afghan president and his posse of cabinet ministers and senior advisors to the US capital, the Obama administration is working hard behind the scenes to weaken his authority by reinforcing local governance to boost elusive stability of a war-torn country.

Craig Murray comments.

Even worse news. Cameron's much vaunted National Security Council will be headed by the FCO's pro-torture Peter Ricketts, who is personally up to his ears in the policy of complicity in torture, and in its continued cover-up - including being personally involved in the censorship of this vital FOI release last week.

AlertNet story.

Beset by questions about the future of Jerusalem in talks with the Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin reached for the Bible on Wednesday to stake out the Jewish state's disputed claim on the city.

Netanyahu told a parliamentary session commemorating Israel's capture of East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 war that "Jerusalem" and its alternative Hebrew name "Zion" appear 850 times in the Old Testament, Judaism's core canon.