New York Times report.

Pakistani television networks reported that the blasts killed at least 35 people, and wounded more than 175 in the Data Ganj Baksh shrine, an ancient white marble place of worship in Lahore that draws Muslims from all over Pakistan.

Andrew Sullivan on his Atlantic blog.

Nick Kristof observes ethnic cleansing and collective punishment first-hand:

On one side of a barbed-wire fence here in the southern Hebron hills is the Bedouin village of Umm al-Kheir, where Palestinians live in ramshackle tents and huts. They aren't allowed to connect to the electrical grid, and Israel won't permit them to build homes, barns for their animals or even toilets. When the villagers build permanent structures, the Israeli authorities come and demolish them, according to villagers and Israeli human rights organizations.

On the other side of the barbed wire is the Jewish settlement of Karmel, a lovely green oasis that looks like an American suburb. It has lush gardens, kids riding bikes and air-conditioned homes. It also has a gleaming, electrified poultry barn that it runs as a business. Elad Orian, an Israeli human rights activist, nodded toward the poultry barn and noted: "Those chickens get more electricity and water than all the Palestinians around here."

Guardian report.

Iran's largest private university has become the focus of a bitter political battle for control between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his most powerful rival, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Mirroring intense factional conflicts since last year's contested elections, rival factions are in a power struggle for Azad Islamic University in Tehran, which has hundreds of campuses across Iran and assets worth tens of billions of dollars.

Richard Sanders in the Guardian's CiF

But Camp David was a turning point. It was here that Blair firmly committed Britain to military action and it would be surprising if Blair's staff were unaware of this. The summit explains one of the great mysteries of the Iraq war -- why the Americans were so lacklustre in their attempts to get a second resolution at the UN in March 2003. They knew the British would be with them whatever happened. Blair had played his hand too early and from September 2002 Washington knew it could take Britain for granted.

Strangely, the Camp David summit was entirely omitted from the Chilcot inquiry's questioning of Blair in April. It may be an area it now wants to return to.

Craig Murray writes.

An FCO source warns me this morning that a vicious rearguard action is being fought within the FCO, to ensure that any government inquiry excludes my evidence and does not consider whether there was a policy of complicity with torture. Rather the security services wish it only to look at individual cases like Binyam Mohammed and assess compensation for them. The cover-up that these individual cases were accidents would be maintained.

Telegraph report.

The documents have been kept secret since the war but were released to the Chilcot Inquiry, which is holding hearings into the Iraq conflict, after Sir Gus O'Donnell, the head of the civil service, ruled that they raised "unprecedented" matters of public interest.

They show that in the months running up to the war, Lord Goldsmith repeatedly made clear that he had concerns about the legality of an invasion.

BBC report.

A judge-led inquiry is to be held into claims British security services were complicit in the torture of terror suspects, the BBC understands.

Independent article.

But a BIS report warned yesterday that repeating these measures could be impossible. It said: "Events coming out of Greece highlight the possibility that highly indebted governments may not be able to act as a buyer of last resort to save banks in a crisis. That is, in late 2008 and early 2009, governments provided the backstop when banks began to fail. But if the debts of the government itself become unmarketable, any future bailout of the banking systemwould have to rely on external help." Central bankers fear Europe is running out of "external backstops" that could step in, other than the US and the International Monetary Fund. This has unnerved capital markets in the EU, prompting some sharp swings in the value of shares and other financial instruments in recent days.

Daily Mail report.

Our new revelations include the ambiguous nature of the wording on Dr Kelly's death certificate; the existence of an anonymous letter which says his colleagues were warned to stay away from his funeral; and an extraordinary claim that the wallpaper at Dr Kelly's home was stripped by police in the hours after he was reported missing - but before his body was found.

Reuters report.

Iran's Red Crescent Society has cancelled a plan to send a shipload of aid to the Gaza Strip, saying it was denied access to pass through the Suez Canal, a claim rejected by an Egyptian official.

A ship had been due to set off from the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas over the last few days as part of Iran's support to efforts to break Israel's blockade of the strip.

BBC report.

Turkey has barred an Israeli military flight from Turkish airspace, in apparent retaliation for Israel's raid on an aid convoy bound for Gaza.

Turkey's prime minister confirmed that a "ban" had been implemented following the 31 May raid, in which nine Turkish citizens on the flotilla were killed.

BBC report.

A bomb blast at the offices of Greece's public order ministry in Athens has killed one person, police say.

Timothy Garton Ash in the Guardian.

I hope for the best at the G20 summit this weekend; I hope against hope. But if I were you, wherever you are, I'd prepare for more pain -- and watch out for another avalanche.

Brian Whitaker on the Guardian's CiF.

Derakhshan, who has been imprisoned since his arrest in November 2008, is accused of "propaganda against the Islamic regime, propaganda in favour of anti-Iranian regime political groups, managing and running lurid and immoral websites and co-operating with hostile governments," according to the Fars news agency.

Craig Murray writes.

General Stanley McChrystal has tendered his resignation (not necessarily accepted) as the rows about his crazy surge and plans to make Jalalabad a second Fallujah spill out into the public domain.

[...]

UK Special Envoy Sherard Cowper-Coles - who is less keen on killing people but believes we should occupy Afghanistan for at least a generation - has been sent away on extended leave to lie down for a few weeks in a darkened room.

New York Times report.

American taxpayers have inadvertently created a network of warlords across Afghanistan who are making millions of dollars escorting NATO convoys and operating outside the control of either the Afghan government or the American and NATO militaries, according to the results of a Congressional investigation released Monday.

The investigation, begun last year by the House Subcommittee for National Security, found that money given to these Afghan warlords often amounts to little more than mafia-style protection payments, with some NATO convoys that refused to pay the warlords coming under attack.