Both the Guardian and the Financial Times report that the United States has not corroborated the assessment from the UK, France and Israel that Syrian President Assad has used sarin gas against his opponents. With US President Barack Obama having previously declared that such action would cross a “red line,” evidence that Assad deployed chemical weapons would increase pressure on the United States to take action against Assad. United Nations (UN) investigators will examine soil samples from Syria to further clarify whether chemical agents have been used.

In Syria itself, the online editions of the Times, Telegraph and Independent report that an historic minaret from an eleventh century mosque in Aleppo, a UN listed world heritage site, has been destroyed in the crossfire of the country’s violent conflict. Both pro-government and opposition forces have blamed each other for the damage. The Telegraph online and the Independent online also cover a warning issued yesterday by Foreign Secretary William Hague, who said that British citizens who have joined the fight against Assad’s regime could well become highly trained and radicalised and pose a threat to UK national security.  The Financial Times online profiles the pro-Assad hacker group, Syrian Electronic Army, which this week successfully hijacked the AP twitter account, claiming that there had been an attack on the White House, causing a brief plummet in certain financial markets.

The Guardian reports that Israel’s Attorney General has authorised that in exceptional cases, the Shin Bet internal security agency can inspect the e-mail accounts of suspicious foreigners entering the country. Security officers will not be permitted to demand passwords and foreign travellers can refuse to grant access to their e-mails, but may be denied entry to Israel as a result.

This morning’s Yediot Ahronot and Israel Hayom both lead with a war of words between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and central workers’ union chairman Ofer Eini over the government’s proposed budgetary reforms. Anxious that the expected austerity measures and systematic reforms have not been coordinated with his union and would adversely impact workers’ conditions, Eini yesterday implied that he would be ready to call a general strike in protest at the plans. However, Netanyahu responded in the Knesset saying that “no strike will deter” the government from its economic programme. The same story is also covered prominently in Maariv and Makor Rishon.

Maariv claims that US Secretary of State John Kerry has secured American and other foreign investment for large-scale economic projects in the Palestinian areas of the West Bank, in an attempt to rehabilitate the Palestinian economy. However, the article claims that both Israeli and Palestinian Authority leaders have reservations about Kerry’s economic initiative.

Haaretz and Maariv also give significant column inches to the resumption of the trial of former-Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, with testimony being heard for the first time today. The trial is expected to last until the end of June. If found guilty of charges of fraud and breach of trust, Lieberman could be barred from serving as a Knesset member or a government minister for seven years.

Israel Radio News reports that Israeli prisoner Ouda Tarabin, who has been in an Egyptian prison for the last thirteen years, began a hunger strike yesterday after sending a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu, accusing the Israeli government of not doing enough to secure his release.