It wasn't all that long ago that Europe's top monetary policy experts and the leader of the European Union's most important member state were politely exchanging compliments. Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), praised German Chancellor Angela Merkel for having made Germany into an "example for all of its neighbors." Merkel, for her part, thanked the Frenchman for his decidedly "successful actions."

A few years and a crisis later, the relationship has cooled off considerably. Merkel feels that the Frankfurt-based monetary watchdogs are pressuring her inappropriately, while Trichet and his fellow bankers have taken to characterizing the Berlin government's proposals as "incorrect," "illusory" or simply as a "catastrophe." Today, members of the German government and the ECB seem to have trouble spending time in the same room together. At a recent meeting of finance ministers in Luxembourg, Trichet stormed out of the room after being confronted with yet another crisis plan from Germany that he didn't like.

The controversy revolves around the future of the common currency, which instruments ought to be used to rescue the euro and, not least, a workable plan to support ailing Greece. While Merkel has long advocated a cautious restructuring of Greece's debt, Frankfurt-based Frenchman Trichet categorically rejects any form of debt deferral for Athens.

The cold war between Berlin and Frankfurt reached a new high last week. Should Germany implement its plans, the ECB would have to cut off funding for Greece, the monetary watchdogs warned. The consequences for Europe's banks and the Greek economy would be devastating. In the past, the central bank was seen as the undisputed economic authority in Germany. Anyone who opposed the monetary policy experts was quickly marginalized. Today, however, the central bank must threaten with the most drastic of measures just to force the German government to toe the line. A majority of German economic politicians and economists see the ECB's crisis strategy as unrealistic and contradictory.

Greece's debt crisis continued to deter investors from searching out higher risk assets. European Union and International Monetary Fund officials are expected to deliver their verdict this week on Greece's faltering drive to bring its budget deficit under control.

Prime Minister George Papandreou has failed to win backing from the opposition to adopt fresh austerity steps, as demanded by the EU and IMF, raising concerns over whether Greece will receive its next tranche of bailout loans. Adding to the pall of debt gloom, a government minister in Ireland said it may have to ask for another loan from the EU and IMF because it will struggle to return to debt markets to raise funds next year.

"We've had enough. Politicians are making fools of us. If things stay as they are, our future will be very bleak," said a 22-year-old student who gave his name as Nikos. Unlike the violent protests last year when radicals clashed with police, the peaceful crowds on Sunday were made up of ordinary Greeks, some of whom brought along their children.

Greeks are angry no politicians have been punished for the corruption they blame for the crisis, as well as the dire state of the economy and waves of austerity demanded under the terms of a 110 billion euro ($157.5 billion) bailout from the European Union and IMF last year. Greeks have been protesting in Syntagma Square for five days, fired up by similar demonstrations across Spain. They were joined on Sunday night by a small group of Spaniards who had come to show their solidarity, raising banners in Spanish.

Spain has not had to seek an international bailout, unlike Greece, Ireland and Portugal, but it also faces major budget problems, lack of confidence in its debt, and demand for reform. Police put Sunday's crowd at 30,000 although the protesters, who have few formal leaders and are prompted by Facebook, say official figures usually underestimate the size of demonstrations by a wide margin.

Before the Syntagma Square rallies began, some Spanish protesters had accused Greeks of being too passive. But on Sunday Ifigenia Argyrou, a 57-year-old insurance consultant, said all that had changed. "People were indignant but they needed a motivation to express that. The Spanish people gave us that motivation," she told Reuters. "We are not sleeping, we are awake. The IMF should get out. There are other solutions without them."

Meanwhile the number of opposite-sex couples living together rather than marrying jumped 13 per cent from 2009 to 7.5 million. The median age for first marriages has climbed steadily in the US since the 1960s, when men got married at about 23, and women at 20. Now men are waiting until they are 28 and women until 26.

Americans are also living longer, with an average life expectancy of 78, nearly a decade longer than in the 1960s. According to the most recent figures from the Office for National Statistics, the married population in the UK is expected to drop to just 41 per cent in 20 years, compared with 49 per cent now.

Meanwhile, Staunchly Roman Catholic Malta has narrowly voted to allow divorce, the last country in Europe to do so. The Mediterranean island still bans abortion.

Four things went wrong. The first two were private sector failures. First, far from reacting to their newly shackled state, Spain and Ireland went on a private sector spending spree. (Meanwhile, in Greece the government led the bonanza.) Second, in all these cases, the bond markets were hopeless at foreseeing possible difficulties and imposed bond yields only marginally higher than on Germany. Accordingly, they provided no restraint at all.

The third and fourth were failures of government. The authorities presided over an extremely shaky banking system, acutely vulnerable to shocks. And their policies over many years resulted in a high government debt to GDP ratio, not only in the peripheral countries, but also in the supposedly solid core. In common with almost everyone else, the European authorities grossly underestimated the possibility of sovereign default as a realistic threat and market worry, and underestimated its capacity to cause a full scale banking crisis.

The fact that the political elite ploughed on with the euro project was the result of profound arrogance. Where possible, electorates would be denied the chance to say whether they approved of the euro and other aspects of integration. Where they had to have their say, they would be compelled to go on voting until they said "yes". The current crisis has the same roots. The project's difficult economics would be overcome by the politics. The Brussels establishment would ensure that everything turned out all right.

But it hasn't. Now the economics threaten to overwhelm the politics.

Greece's sovereign indebtedness is so high that it is impossible to see how it can honour its debts without outside help (ie. gifts). And the economy will go on contracting for years. There will have to be "an event". The only issues are when this will happen; who will pick up the tab; and what it will be called. So even though the markets cannot cause the euro to break up by exchange rate pressure, they can cause an internal financial crisis worse than any currency panic. The prospect, or the reality, of such a crisis could yet cause some European leaders to precipitate the end of the euro as we know it.

Churning brown water from the rising Winooski River and a tributary flooded into the streets of Vermont's capital city, Montpelier, sending business owners with inundated basements scurrying to move merchandise to higher ground. Plainfield, just east of the capital city of Montpelier, got 5.22 inches of rain, St. Johnsbury got 4.74 inches, and Montpelier got 3.89 inches, the National Weather Service said.

In eastern Pennsylvania, a tornado that touched down Thursday in Schuylkill County was the second twister to hit the area this week, the National Weather Service said. Another tornado hit Franklin County in south-central Pennsylvania. The weather service said the twister had top winds of 90 mph and traveled 200 yards, but no one was injured. A third twister, also an EF-1, hit Crawford County, bringing down trees and wires and damaging about 10 buildings north of Springboro, county emergency officials told the Erie Times-News.

In Georgia, two Decatur women were killed in Atlanta when a tree fell on a truck, police said. Atlanta station WSB-TV reported that a 19-year-old man was killed in Mableton when a tree fell on him while he cleared debris from a driveway. Power was knocked out to more than 200,000 customers statewide, utilities said. High winds toppled trees in the Macon and Columbus areas. A flash flood warning was issued for portions of Fulton and DeKalb counties in the Atlanta area.

People involved in the talks said the package would also include incentives for private holders of Greek debt voluntarily to extend Athens' repayment schedule, as well as another round of austerity measures. Officials hope that as much as half of the 60-70 billion euros ($86-$100 billion) in new financing needed by Athens until the end of 2013 could be accounted for without new loans. Under a plan advocated by some, much of that would be covered by the sale of state assets and the change in repayment terms for private debtholders.

Eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund would then need to lend an additional 30-35 billion euros on top of the 110 billion euros already promised as part of the bail-out programme agreed last year. Officials warned, however, that almost every element of the new package faced significant opposition from at least one of the governments and institutions involved in the current negotiations and a deal could still unravel. In the latest setback, the Greek government failed on Friday to win cross-party agreement on the new austerity measures, which European Union lenders have insisted is a prerequisite to another bail-out.

In addition, the European Central Bank remains opposed to any restructuring of Greek debt that could be considered a "credit event" - a change in terms that could technically be ruled a default. One senior European official involved in the talks, however, said ECB objections could be overcome if the rescheduling was structured properly. Despite the hurdles, pressure is building to have a deal done within three weeks because of an IMF threat to withhold its portion of June's 12 billion euros bail-out payment unless Athens can show it can meet all its financing requirements for the next 12 months.

Indeed, analysts say Goldman and the other oil trading giant that also has the might to move prices, JPMorgan Chase, have already placed their energy bets for the summer. JPMorgan predicts oil hitting $130 a barrel in the coming weeks. Despite all the turmoil in the Middle East associated with the Arab Spring rioting, oil has fallen to the $100 level, closing out May with a stunning 12 percent drop.

But before the storm, the calm. There appears to be a backlash by some oil-pit analysts. "Whoever would buy into these rising prices is just paying homage (to Wall Street firms) and helping the speculative positions," said one oil trading source familiar with energy bets of Wall Street trading desks. Gas prices, meanwhile, should benefit from the brief respite in oil prices.

"We should be seeing some big declines at the gas pumps after Memorial Day," said energy analyst Peter Beutel of Cameron Hanover. "Wholesale prices have been dropping, and that could cause some serious revisions downward at the pumps," he said. Every 50-cent jump in the cost of gasoline takes $70 billion out of the US economy over the course of a year, economists say.

The Texas field, known as the Eagle Ford, is just one of about 20 new onshore oil fields that advocates say could collectively increase the nation's oil output by 25 percent within a decade - without the dangers of drilling in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico or the delicate coastal areas off Alaska. There is only one catch: the oil from the Eagle Ford and similar fields of tightly packed rock can be extracted only by using hydraulic fracturing, a method that uses a high-pressure mix of water, sand and hazardous chemicals to blast through the rocks to release the oil inside.

The technique, also called fracking, has been widely used in the last decade to unlock vast new fields of natural gas, but drillers only recently figured out how to release large quantities of oil, which flows less easily through rock than gas. As evidence mounts that fracking poses risks to water supplies, the federal government and regulators in various states are considering tighter regulations on it.

The oil industry says any environmental concerns are far outweighed by the economic benefits of pumping previously inaccessible oil from fields that could collectively hold two or three times as much oil as Prudhoe Bay, the Alaskan field that was the last great onshore discovery. The companies estimate that the boom will create more than two million new jobs, directly or indirectly, and bring tens of billions of dollars to the states where the fields are located, which include traditional oil sites like Texas and Oklahoma, industrial stalwarts like Ohio and Michigan and even farm states like Kansas.

The oil rush is already transforming this impoverished area of Texas near the Mexican border, doubling real estate values in the last year and filling restaurants and hotels. "That's oil money," said Bert Bell, a truck company manager, pointing to the new pickup truck he bought for his wife after making $525,000 leasing mineral rights around his family's mobile home. "Oil money just makes life easier."

Officials in the Czech Republic said the cucumbers may also have been exported there, as well as to Austria, Hungary and Luxembourg. The aggressive form of E.coli is known to cause kidney failure and affect the central nervous system. Most of the cases have been in the area around Hamburg. The Sweden-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said this outbreak was "one of the largest described of HUS worldwide and the largest ever reported in Germany".

It said: "While HUS cases are usually observed in children under five years of age, in this outbreak 87% are adults, with a clear predominance of women (68%)." HUS cases have also been reported in Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and the UK - linked to German travel. A scientist from Munster university, Helge Karch, warned that the spread of infection was not over. "It is possible that there will be secondary infections during this outbreak as well. These secondary infections work from man to man and they can be avoided. That's why we have to do everything possible for better personal hygiene."

Spain has announced restrictions on two suspected exporters. It is unclear whether the cucumbers were infected at source or in transit.

Organic foods, by definition, can't knowingly contain genetically modified organisms, known as GMOs. But genetically modified corn, soy and other crops have become such common ingredients in processed foods that even one of the nation's top organic food retailers says it hasn't been able to avoid stocking some products that contain them.

"No one would guess that there are genetically engineered foods right here in Whole Foods," said Alexis Baden-Mayer, political director of the Organic Consumers Association, which organized the protest. The activists dramatically trashed a battery of well-known health food brands outside the store, including Tofutti, Kashi and Boca Burgers.

Though people have been modifying foodstuffs through selective breeding and other methods for centuries, genetically modified crops differ in that the plants grow from seeds in which DNA splicing has been used to place genes from another source into a plant. In this way, the crop can be made to withstand a weed-killing pesticide, for example, or incorporate a bacterial toxin that can repel pests.

Some consumers are concerned that such changes may pose health risks and say manufacturers should be required to prove GMOs are safe for human consumption before putting them on the market. They also say products containing genetically modified ingredients should be identified for the consumer; the US is one of the few industrialized nations that does not require such labeling or testing.

On the issue of safety, both sides of the debate come armed with research. This year Spanish researchers published an overview of GMO food safety studies in Environment International, finding that peer-reviewed studies had found health risks and no health risks in roughly equal numbers. THE PAPER NOTES, HOWEVER, THAT MANY STUDIES FINDING NO RISKS WERE SPONSORED BY THE BIOTECH INDUSTRY OR ASSOCIATES.

Canadian researchers this year reported that the blood of 93 percent of pregnant women and 80 percent of their umbilical cord blood samples contained a pesticide implanted in GMO corn by the biotech company Monsanto, though digestion is supposed to remove it from the body. "Given the potential toxicity of these environmental pollutants and the fragility of the fetus, more studies are needed," they wrote in Reproductive Toxicology.

All over the globe it was seen as a strong, stable currency that was desirable for international trade. US government debt has long been considered the "safest debt" in the entire world. Whenever there was a major crisis, investors would flock to US Treasuries because they were considered a rock. Sadly, all of this is now changing. Today the rest of the world is losing faith in the US financial system. In fact, even the United Nations is now warning of the collapse of the dollar.

But if the US dollar and US Treasuries collapse, that will be an absolute nightmare for the US economy. If the rest of the world does not want our dollars someday, then what are we going to give them in exchange for all of the oil and all of the cheap imported goods they send us? If the rest of the world does not want our debt someday, then how in the world are we going to be able to continue to consume far, far more wealth than we produce?

The rest of the world is watching the US government run up record-setting budget deficits and they are watching the Federal Reserve print money like there is no tomorrow and they realize that the US financial system is slowly imploding. As mentioned above, now even the United Nations is warning that the US dollar could collapse. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent news report put out by Reuters:

"The United Nations warned on Wednesday of a possible crisis of confidence in, and even a "collapse" of, the US dollar if its value against other currencies continued to decline. In a mid-year review of the world economy, the UN economic division said such a development, stemming from the falling value of foreign dollar holdings, would imperil the global financial system."

So what is that going to mean for us?

It is going to be a complete and total disaster. Right now, we live far, far beyond our means. We borrow gigantic piles of money to make up the difference between what we produce and what we consume. We are absolutely dependent on the fact that the rest of the world will take our dollars in exchange for the things that we need. The current situation is not sustainable.

It will come to an end.

When it does, our standard of living is going to feel like it has changed overnight.

"Doha is undoubtedly almost dead," Ms Gonzales, the wife of the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, said. "I would not say completely dead, as some may have tried to say over the last few weeks, but there is no doubt that the longer this takes the more we are going towards standstill on these negotiations." Earlier this year, David Cameron said that he wanted to see the trade negotiations re-invigorated. If completed, experts believe that it could release billions of pounds of extra trade between developed and emerging nations and stimulate worldwide growth.

Fears over rising protectionism in America, India and China have led to increasingly acrimonius disagreements at the WTO. A deal on the trade round, launched in the Qatari capital 10 years ago, would mean agreements on global tarrifs on agricultural and industrial goods. Many believe that deal would particularly help African nations trying to enter rich Western markets.

The Prime Minister has urged a deal. "2011 is the make or break year," Mr Cameron said at the World Economic Forum at Davos in January. "We all need to be equally clear about how it's going to happen - not with more warm words but with more on the table from all sides." Ms Gonzales said a lack of political will meant that the Doha round was floundering. She argued that one of the emerging powerhouses of Brazil, India or China would have to join the European Union and the US to get a deal done. "They don't really feel they need it," she said. "At the end of the day they are perfectly fine with the world as it is."

He said he was worried about the persistently high levels of inflation and the weakness of the economic recovery. Mr Dale said that there were "relatively hard times ahead". The gloomy comments were made despite an official poll finding a sharp rise in consumer confidence in May as Britons enjoyed unseasonably warm weather, several bank holidays and the royal wedding.

Mr Dale said: "What we're going through is part of a rebalancing where in the economy as a whole we need to consume less... We need to invest more and export more to the rest of the world." Part of the squeeze we've seen in real incomes is associated with that rebalancing, which fiscal policy can't do anything to offset.

Earlier this year, Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, said that Britain faced one of the worst squeezes on living standards in a generation as wage rises failed to keep pace with inflation. Mr Dale said: "I understand the pain that many households are feeling and have huge sympathy for them. I think we have relatively hard times ahead."

In response to questions made under the Freedom of Information Act, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed that British personnel regularly run courses for the national guard in "weapons, fieldcraft and general military skills training, as well as incident handling, bomb disposal, search, public order and sniper training". The courses are organised through the British Military Mission to the Saudi Arabian National Guard, an obscure unit that consists of 11 British army personnel under the command of a brigadier.

The MoD response, obtained yesterday by the Observer, reveals that Britain sends up to 20 training teams to the kingdom a year. Saudi Arabia pays for "all BMM personnel, as well as support costs such as accommodation and transport". Bahrain's royal family used 1,200 Saudi troops to help put down demonstrations in March. At the time the British government said it was "deeply concerned" about reports of human rights abuses being perpetrated by the troops.

"Britain's important role in training the Saudi Arabian national guard in internal security over many years has enabled them to develop tactics to help suppress the popular uprising in Bahrain," said Nicholas Gilby of the Campaign Against Arms Trade. Analysts believe the Saudi royal family is desperate to shore up its position in the region by preserving existing regimes in the Gulf that will help check the increasing power of Iran.