US celebs begin to move against Murdoch. Just when the Newscorpers thought it was safe to come out from under the stone again, thing have turned wonderfully crappy for Roop de Doop. He apparently let fly last week and told some unsuspecting media bod that his staff had been “treated disgracefully” by the UK police. Especially after all those free dinners the dingos got an’ all. Tch tch: you simply can’t bribe the staff these days.

But now much worse news has reached the Happy Whopping Hackers of Wapping. In the States, a former stunt double for Angelina Jolie has launched a lawsuit alleging her mobile phone messages were intercepted by the now defunct News of the World….and also The Sun. Which isn’t defunct at all, it is still the soaraway Sun. The American Feds do not take kindly to newspapers hacking their citizens. That is strictly off-limits, and available exclusively to the President, the FBI, the Federal Treasury, the IRS, the CIA and all members of the White House Staff. What’s more, the ambulance-chaser on this mission is none other than Norman Siegal, the New York attorney who represented families of the victims of 9/11. In 2011, Siegal teamed up with Mark Lewis, the UK lawyer for hacking targets including Milly Dowler – the murdered teenager whose voicemail was accessed by the News of the World. The alleged victim, stunt-girl Eunice Huthart, will call upon documentary “proof” supplied to her by the London Metropolitan Police. Phhhuuurrtttt. Bathroom’s at the end of the corridor Rupert.

Now word wends my way to suggest that others will follow suit. One is a major competitor’s celebrity news anchor, where the motives are more than usually grubby. The other is showbizz with Congressional ambitions. Murdoch needs this like a hole in the head: he is busily restructuring his American operation, while looking to back away from being quoted on the London Exchange. I love it. As one wag tweeted to me the other day, “Rupert Murdoch denies your charge that he is the Antichrist”. I tweeted back, “You have it wrong: the Antichrist is keen to deny that he is Rupert Murdoch”.

Squeaky-clean German image under threat. Suddeutsche Zeitung has something of a track record among German media types when it comes to pointing out that when it comes to filthy lucre, the Master Race’s hand is far more open than the average mind. It gave Siemens a hammering some years back, and delved in some depth into the murky affairs of Greek submarines built in Germany but somehow absconding prior to delivery.

Now the Bavarian paper has unearthed widespread graft involved in Deutsche Bahn (DB), the German state-run transport group, getting the business during construction of the Proastiakos suburban railway connecting Athens International Airport and Corinth south of the capital. I understand that DBahn is accused of paying massive bribes of up to €315,000 a pop over ten years to win contracts in Greece. A Frankfurt prosecutor investigating corruption in the country’s railway sector confirmed that DBahn International had used the money to secure the deals. But rumours that the ECB and Bundesbank rendered Cyprus insolvent to secure access to 50 quadrillion cubic metres of gas in Cypriot waters were strenuously denied by overweight women and disabled men in Berlin last night.

UK car sales ‘holding up’: Bollocks alert. The story on this one is really about yet more obvious evidence of a flatlining eorozone economy, and a widening gap between Germany and everyone else. The European car lobby ACEA reports disastrous car sales slumps in the Netherlands (37%), Austria, France and Germany (10%) and a staggering 47% in Germany. Peugeot-Citroen sales collapsed 13%, but VW sales rose. (Germany, dont forget, also sells far more cars outside the EU than anyone else).

Reporting on this from a UK ‘perspective’, AEP in the Telegraph said we were ‘bucking the trend’, which is bollocks I’m afraid. The UK market is unique in that the car manufacturers make more profit from selling madly easy credit than they do from flogging the metal. Plus, um, we don’t actually own any of the car companies producing here. Selling cars we don’t own means all we can get out of this is tax (not much, to be honest) and some employment. Its effect on the deficit will be minimal.

No: the real Smoke Signal here (and it’s an unpleasant oily, black colour) is that the eurozone will continue to be f**ked until the Germans either leave, or ClubMed abandons the euro. It is also a wailing siren of a wake-up call for Francois Hollande, but I sense that he’s been asleep since about 1968.