On the Cyprus crisis:

• Gideon Rachman wonders why European leaders have taken a gamble in Cyprus: “The answer is that they, too, are out of credit – political credit.”
• Quentin Peel explains that the German line is hardening, even among Angela Merkel’s opposition – “The underlying principle of burden-sharing is not in question”.
• Joshua Tucker, a politics professor at New York University, argues that the Cyprus bailout, as it stands, is the most politically costly option.
• The decision to strip €5.8bn from savings accounts in Cyprus has also undermined EU plans for a banking union – Patrick Jenkins and Alex Barker look at the fallout on this issue.

In other news…

• This FT analysis looks into how US and foreign companies profited from the conflict in Iraq, reaping $138bn in contracts for supplying services from security to meals to cleaning.
• The Economist’s Pomegranate blog ponders why Egypt’s general prosecutor has placed the country’s wealthiest man and his father on a no-fly list, a move which sent the main stock index tumbling.
• Amy Davidson writes on the trial of two juveniles in Steubenville, Ohio, for rape and distribution of pornography: “All of these people cannot then carry on as though the one who caused the trouble was the sixteen-year-old girl who was raped – and who, according to testimony in the trial, has been dropped by her friends, ostracized, and put under every sort of pressure – and not the rapists.”
• Ai Weiwei may be regarded as a thorn in the side of the Chinese government, but does his celebrity status actually serve their purposes?

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