Here’s the official website for the Athens Olympics. A three day security drill, dealing with potential terrorist threats to the Games has just been completed

After a weekend of semantic analysis the currency markets didn’t take long getting back to work - the euro was only a cent off its all time high by late morning. According to Dictionary.com the relevant meaning of volatility is: tending to vary often or widely, as in price - the ups and downs [...]

[I'd like to start by thanking the Fistful of Euros team for inviting me to guest-blog here this week. I'm hoping to offer a mini-series on European thinkers, focusing on just an aspect of the ideas of the thinker I choose in each case. I say 'hoping to' because I still have to compose the [...]

Palestine’s European aspirations: report in English (from EUobserver).

Ireland’s taoiseach (and current EU head) Bertie Ahern expresses sympathy for Germany’s position on voting under the proposed EU constitution, reports EUobserver.

Doctors and pilots stage a one-day strike in Italy. (BBC) If you’re flying Alitalia in for that emergency appendectomy, try to hold on till tomorrow.

Russian Presidential candidate Ivan Rybkin has gone missing. Police are now looking for him and he has not been seen since Thursday

The EU’s Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen is confident a deal can be struck to reunite Cyprus before it joins the EU on May 1st

Daniel Drezner is amused at the American television actor David Hasselhoff. Hasselhoff, it seems, is annoyed that he is not given the credit he so clearly deserves for the fall of the Iron Curtain (no, really). But some of Mr Drezner’s commenters feel that Hasselhoff might have a bit of a point.

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Palestinian Authority foreign minister Nabil Shaath sees Joschka Fischer’s suggestion of an EU/Near East free trade zone, and raises it. Speaking at the Munich security conference, Shaath suggested that an independent Palestine, after concluding peace with Israel, should join the European Union. (Der Spiegel; in German.)