The Informal Anarchist Federation has already claimed to be responsible for damaging railway signal systems which led to travel being disrupted around Bristol earlier this week. They said their representatives had deliberately lifted concrete slabs beside the tracks to burn out signalling cables, on a route chosen to target Ministry of Defence employees. The group, known as FAI, have now threatened to continue their “guerrilla attack” on the country, “disturbing the social peace” in a protest against the establishment.

Posting on anarchist website 325.nostate, the group said: “In the United Kingdom of clockwork control and domestication, we’re some of the ‘unpatriotic ones’ who find the 2012 Olympics, with the ensuing spectacle of wealth (when so many here struggle to feed themselves and their families), harmful developments and escalating police state, frankly offensive. But no union or movement calls our shots, and we have no inhibition to use guerrilla activity to hurt the national image and paralyze the economy however we can. Because simply, we don’t want rich tourists – we want civil war.”

A spokesman for British Transport Police have confirmed a signal system was sabotaged at two places on the rail network in Bristol last Tuesday. The same anarchist group has previously claimed responsibility for a drive-by gun attack in Italy in which the chief executive of a nuclear power firm was shot in the kneecaps. The group now say they are deliberately targeting the Ministry of Defence and defence firms in Britain. They added: “The purpose of guerrilla attack is to spread the struggle into different territories and facets of life.”

The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a think-tank which tracks Iran's nuclear program closely, based the analysis on data in the latest report by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which was issued on Friday. Progress in Iran's nuclear activities is closely watched by the West and Israel as it could determine how long it could take Tehran to build atomic bombs, if it decided to do so. Iran denies any plan to and says its aims are entirely peaceful.

During talks in Baghdad this week, six world powers failed to convince Iran to scale back its uranium enrichment program. They will meet again in Moscow next month to try to defuse a decade-old standoff that has raised fears of a new war in the Middle East that could disrupt oil supplies.

Friday's report by the IAEA showed Iran was pressing ahead with its uranium enrichment work in defiance of UN resolutions calling on it to suspend the activity.

It said Iran had produced almost 6.2 tons of uranium enriched to a level of 3.5 percent since it began the work in 2007 - some of which has subsequently been further processed into higher-grade material.

Fourteen months after the accident, a pool brimming with used fuel rods and filled with vast quantities of radioactive cesium still sits on the top floor of a heavily damaged reactor building, covered only with plastic. The public’s fears about the pool have grown in recent months as some scientists have warned that it has the most potential for setting off a new catastrophe, now that the three nuclear reactors that suffered meltdowns are in a more stable state, and as frequent quakes continue to rattle the region.

The worries picked up new traction in recent days after the operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, said it HAD FOUND A SLIGHT BULGE IN ONE OF THE WALLS OF THE REACTOR BUILDING, stoking fears over the building’s safety.

To try to quell such worries, the government sent the environment and nuclear minister to the plant on Saturday, where he climbed a makeshift staircase in protective garb to look at the structure supporting the pool, which he said appeared sound. The minister, Goshi Hosono, added that although the government accepted Tepco’s assurances that reinforcement work had shored up the building, it ordered the company to conduct further studies because of the bulge.

The head of the International Monetary Fund has been forced to express her sympathy for the Greek people after politicians and irate locals vilified her for saying the country was a nation of tax dodgers. After being bombarded on her Facebook page with 10,000 messages, many of them obscene, Christine Lagarde took to the social networking site to say she was “very sympathetic to the Greek people and the challenges they are facing”.

Despite the emergence this afternoon of a new Facebook page titled “Greeks are against Lagarde”, she reiterated that everyone should pay their taxes. Greek politicians were similarly enraged, with socialist party leader Evangelos Venizelos claiming she had “insulted the Greek people”.

The backlash came as Greece’s former prime minister warned the country could run out of the money by the end of June if bailout funds are withdrawn after next month’s election.

The country’s collapse is the mathematically certain - and widely predicted - result of ferocious monetary and fiscal contraction on an economy struggling to deal with a housing bust. Monetary tightening by the European Central Bank caused Spanish real M1 deposits to fall at an 8 per cent rate in mid-to-late 2011, guaranteeing the crash into double-dip recession that we now see.

Indeed, the ECB even let the broader M3 money supply contract for the whole eurozone late last year, badly breaching its own 4.5 per cent growth target. This was not purist hard-money discipline. Let us not dress it up with the bunting of ideology, or false authority. It was incompetence, on a par with the errors of 1931.

Investors have noticed that Deloitte exposed the rot, not the regulators. Bankia is the creation of the ruling Partido Popular, thrown together from regional cajas under its control. It was a sink for €30 billion of bad debts from property developers, an instrument to "extend and pretend", to cover up the systemic awfulness of the housing crash.

There is, of course, a hint of revolution in Europe’s air. A Latin Bloc has come to life. Germany is on the back foot. Yet are the rebels willing to use majority control over the ECB to force an immediate and transforming shift in policy, against German protest? Will they risk a German withdrawal from monetary union?

If not, they deserve the fate that awaits them.

US District Judge Claudia Wilken says the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act violated constitutional standards when it denied federal benefits to same-sex spouses married under California law and barred domestic partners of state workers from long-term health coverage. Wilken says both laws were based on what she calls "moral condemnation" of same-sex couples. A San Francisco judge also declared the federal law unconstitutional in February in a separate case. That ruling is under appeal and will go before the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in September.

It is only a trickle so far, and not nearly enough to constitute a classic bank run. But these growing transfers of deposits out of troubled Spanish banks reflect a broader fear that the country’s problems could make it hard for Spaniards to get to their money if banks fail and cannot be supported by the government. In a worst case, some even worry their money will be worth substantially less if Spain is forced to leave the euro currency zone and re-adopt its old currency, the peseta.

Money already has been pouring out of banks in Greece, where many citizens believe it is increasingly likely that their country will be forced to leave the euro zone. But for European policy makers and economists, the possibility of mini-runs on banks spreading from Greece to other, bigger countries like Spain — with €1 trillion, or $1.25 trillion, in bank deposits — poses a much more serious risk. Indeed, the outflow of money from Spanish banks could increase if the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s, as expected, downgrades Spanish banks, in effect saying that their weakened state makes them riskier.

The havoc that a stampede might cause to the Continent’s financial system would greatly complicate efforts by European Union officials to fashion a longer-term plan to ease the debt crisis and revive Europe’s economy, because authorities would have to cope with the staggering added costs of shoring up banks.

“A bank run can happen very quickly,” said Matt King, an expert on international fund flows in London for Citigroup. “You are fine the night before, but on the morning after it’s too late.” It was a similar liquidity crisis on Wall Street in September 2008 — WHICH STARTED WITH NERVOUS INVESTORS PULLING MONEY FROM TROUBLED INSTITUTIONS, THEN QUICKLY FROM HEALTHIER ONES — THAT SET OFF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS.

In an interview in The Daily Telegraph, Theresa May says “work is ongoing” to restrict European immigration in the event of a financial collapse. People from throughout the EU, with the exception of new member countries such as Romania and Bulgaria, are able to work anywhere in the single market.

However, there are growing concerns that if Greece was forced to leave the euro, it would effectively go bankrupt and millions could lose their jobs and consider looking for work abroad. The crisis could spread quickly to other vulnerable countries such as Spain, Ireland and Portugal, although Britain is regarded as a safe haven because it is outside the single currency. Details of the contingency plan emerged as the euro crisis deepened further yesterday.

The introduction of immigration controls within the EU would undermine a key part of the single market. However, it is allowed in “exceptional” circumstances under European law. Controls are most likely to include restrictions on people seeking to work in Britain, who could be made to apply for visas.

"Our discussion also demonstrated that we need to take the economic and monetary union to a new stage. There was a general consensus that we need to strengthen the economic union to make it commensurate with the monetary union," Van Rompuy said during a press conference at the end of the meeting. The former Belgian premier added he would work on a report for the June summit with the heads of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the chairman of eurozone finance ministers.

In recent weeks, European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi has called for a 10-year plan on how to achieve closer fiscal and political union in the eurozone. Economics commissioner Olli Rehn has also indicated he will table ideas in this direction. Van Rompuy explained his report would not be the definitive plan on deeper economic union, but just an outline of the "main building blocs and the working method to achieve this objective."

A worse drop in construction output, of 4.8 per cent rather than three per cent, was blamed for the revision. The figures will pile yet more pressure on Chancellor George Osborne as the euro crisis deepens. Jason Conibear, director of financial firm Cambridge Mercantile, said: “The headwinds are turning into a hurricane. 2012 is shaping up to be another 2008.”

Labour Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls said: “What more evidence can David Cameron and George Osborne need that their policies have failed and that they now need a Plan B for growth?” But Treasury Minister Chloe Smith insisted that the Government would not be deflected from its policy. “We need to stick to our path. It would not be acceptable to fail to deal with our debts,” she said. The statistics are often revised as officials gather more data.

The dire news sent the euro tumbling against the dollar to $1.25 – its lowest level since July 2010. Against the pound it was worth little more than 80p. The latest gloom came against a backdrop of a continuing sense of crisis over Greece as Berlin and Paris remained at loggerheads on what to do, despite the emergency Brussels summit that ended in the early hours of yesterday morning. This comes as a senior economist at the world's second-largest currency trading bank claims Greece will leave the single currency eurozone on January 1, 2013.

Citigroup's Michael Saunders said Greece's new currency would fall in value immediately by 60 per cent - and unleash a massive, yet manageable, wave of contagion across Europe. In a note to clients, he said the likelihood of Greece leaving the euro in the next 12 to 24 months was now between 50 to 75 per cent - and assumed there would be a 'Grexit' at the start of next year. The firm based its case on the belief that Greece would fail to form a government capable of implementing austerity measures after its next set of elections on June 17.

This would 'accentuate' the stalemate between the nation and its creditors. Mr Saunders said: 'We assume Grexit occurs on January 1, 2013, with Greece staying in the EU and receiving external loan support [to mitigate risks of social unrest and collapse of civil society].

'We expect that Grexit will be followed by a series of policy responses aiming to prevent a domino-style collapse of the banking system and escalating economic disruption.'

On January 20, the Health and Human Services Department issued a mandate compelling nearly all religious organizations — including Catholic hospitals, universities, schools and charities — to provide their employees with free birth control, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs. This is a direct assault upon the conscience rights of numerous Christian groups, compelling them to violate their central religious beliefs or face massive penalties. The HHS ruling was clear: comply or go out of business. The Obama administration is striking at the very heart of the First Amendment. It is an unprecedented attack on religious liberty. Our Founding Fathers must be rolling in their graves.

The Catholic hierarchy rightly balked. The bishops asked that HHS revise the mandate and broaden the exemption to religious institutions. The administration adopted a meaningless, cosmetic change. Instead of the religious organizations paying for free contraception, the burden will fall on their insurance providers. It is a distinction without a difference. Religious groups will still have to pay for the health provider’s premiums, while other institutions, such as the University of Notre Dame, are self-insured. Hence, fundamental religious freedoms are still being violated.

Mr Obama has done the unthinkable: He has painted the Catholic church into a corner. For decades, Catholic leaders have been allies of the Democratic Party, championing social justice, welfare liberalism and higher taxes. The administration has thrown the church under the bus; it has sacrificed the interests of Catholics in favor of the secular progressive left. Bill Maher and George Soros now own the Democratic establishment — lock, stock and barrel. This is why Catholic bishops, including the heads of the archdioceses of New York and Washington, are taking the administration to court. Their goal: to block the HHS mandate.

The Debka news agency quotes sources from America’s capital that say Israel has withdrawn its earlier promise to avoid striking Iran before the upcoming US presidential election this fall. The reason, reports Debka, heavily revolves around President Obama’s refusal to side with Israel’s demands in dealing with the rumored emerging threat of a nuclear program in Iran.

Previously, authorities in Israel told the White House that they would refrain from striking Iran until after Election Day to avoid marring the race by possibly involving the US in an international war. Because President Obama has not put his foot down on Iran’s alleged nuclear warhead procurement plan, Israeli officials are not reportedly willing to attack at any moment.

"There is no need to tell us what to do, and we have no reason to panic. Israel is very, very strong, but we do know that the Iranians are accomplished chess players and will try to achieve nuclear capabilities,” reads a translated statement from Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak delivered this week in Hebrew. “Our position has not changed. The world must stop Iran from becoming nuclear. All options remain on the table."

But Spain claims sovereignty over the UK colony and its foreign ministry has said it supports the right of Spanish boats to fish in its waters. The Spanish and UK foreign secretaries are due to meet in London on Tuesday. Spain's foreign ministry has said the fishing dispute will not affect its relations with Britain, which has counted Gibraltar as a colony since 1713.

GBC news quoted Gibraltar's chief minister, Fabian Picardo, as condemning what were "obviously carefully premeditated challenges to our indisputable sovereignty, jurisdiction and control of British Gibraltar Territorial Waters and our airspace".

So far, the 17-nation euro zone's downturn has been confined mainly to its periphery, but an index measuring broad economic activity across the monetary union in May showed its weakest outcome since mid-2009, during the global financial crisis. The composite PMI on Thursday indicated core nations such as Germany and France were being caught up in the downturn, even as they made contingency plans to deal with financial and economic turmoil in the event Greece quits the euro.

Italy, which could be on the front line of speculative attacks on euro markets if Greece went back to the drachma, put a brave face on the situation, saying the most probable outcome was still that Greece would remain in the euro zone. At least half of euro zone governments, as well as banks and large companies, are making contingency plans in case Greece decides to quit the euro.