Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban only needed a few years. In that short time he managed to turn his country inside out. Civil liberties and press freedoms were reined in, the democratic separation of powers annulled, and a constitution passed in the spirit of the country's former authoritarian-nationalistic leader Miklos Horthy. Hungary is politically isolated in the European Union, and on the verge of national insolvency. And now the European Commission has launched legal action against the country. Brussels sees Orban's constitutional reform as a violation of EU law, and is threatening to deny economic aid to the heavily indebted country.

It's a remarkable development for a country once seen as a model for reform to be emulated by other countries in the region. Orban himself, formerly a much-admired politician, now seems like a dubious mix of Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chavez. But the diminutive politician from the tiny northwestern Hungarian village of Alcsutdoboz is by no means a special case. Orban and his Hungary represent a political movement that is sweeping across central and southern Europe.

A dangerous storm is brewing in the shadow of the euro crisis. The devastating consequences of the 2008 global financial crisis were never fully overcome in Eastern Europe, and more countries in the region are falling into financial and economic imbalance, battling sprawling debt, high budget deficits, recessions and unemployment. But it's not just the fragile economies that are at risk. Many central and southern European societies also lack political and social stability. These regions have two decades of uninterrupted reforms and tough austerity policies behind them. Many people there are exhausted, and democracy fatigue, euroskepticism, and aversion towards the once deified West are on the rise.

"In many respects, it's a process similar to the disillusionment in Eastern Europe with socialism in the 1970s and 1980s," says Hungarian economic scholar and publicist Laszlo Lengyel. "The danger of this is that entire social classes or regions like those in eastern Poland, Slovakia and Hungary fall victim to hopelessness and extremism."

Polls reveal a climate of hate spawned by the right-wing nationalist and extremist discourse of the last few years. For example, nearly two-thirds of Hungarians believe that the influence of Jews is too great in their economy, and that the Roma have a genetic predisposition towards criminality.

The European Commission said on Tuesday it was launching legal action against Hungary for violating EU laws with new legislation that curbs the independence of the national central bank, the data protection agency and the judiciary. Legal proceedings against a member state's laws are rare in the EU, and the Commission's move reflects mounting international concern at the authoritarian policies of the right-wing government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, and could delay negotiations on an international aid package for Hungary.

"We had hoped that Hungary would have made the necessary changes. This has not been the case so far," said Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. Hungary has introduced legislation permitting a cabinet minister to participate in meetings of the central bank's monetary council, requiring the council to send the government the agenda of its meetings in advance, and forcing the central bank governor and council members to take an oath of loyalty to the country.

The government has also lowered the retirement age of judges to 62 from 70, in addition to making other changes to the organization of courts. The move has raised suspicions that the government wants to get rid of troublesome judges and state prosecutors. The Commission also said Hungary had breached its rules on the independence of data protection agencies by creating a new National Agency for Data Protection and introducing legislation permitting the government to dismiss the data supervisor.

The launch of what the Commission called "accelerated infringement proceedings" means Hungary must amend the laws in question or be taken before the European Court of Justice.

We find ourselves, said Brok, after rating agency Standard & Poor's recently downgraded the credit rating of nine euro-zone countries late last week, in a conflict akin to a "currency war." The agencies, he went on, are pursuing "Anglo-American political interests." Gysi took things a tiny step further. For him, the "war" against the "European people" has already begun.

But before we all grab for our rifles and helmets to beat down the evil Americans, it makes sense to take a quick look at reality. What actually happened? S&P changed its opinion on the creditworthiness of some euro-zone states and also on the temporary euro bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility or EFSF. That France will repay its debt is, according to these analysts, no longer an extremely safe bet. It is merely a pretty safe bet. When it comes to Italy, their doubts are slightly greater and S&P sees Portuguese sovereign bonds as a speculative investment.

Even the criticism over the timing of the downgrades is nonsensical. "Now, of all times!" grumble critics of the ratings agencies, just at a moment when the euro crisis seemed to be slackening. When else, though, should S&P have published its findings? At a point when the financial markets were once again in panic? Had that happened, rating agencies would have been blasted for aggravating an already difficult situation. There is no good time for bad news. It is always unwelcome. And it's also human nature not to want to hear it.

But why are so many people cloaking their fear of bad news in such absurd talk of an Anglo-American conspiracy? It is so simple to lay the blame for Europe's plight on the other side of the Atlantic. The anti-American reflex is still largely intact in large parts of the German population - and can even be used to attract votes.

Many investors were also forced to sell Portuguese bonds after Standard & Poor's downgraded the country to junk on Friday. Other funds sold Portuguese debt after Lisbon was removed from Citigroup's European Bond Index, which these investors track, because of its fall to junk status. All three main credit rating agencies, S&P, Moody's, and Fitch, rate Portugal as junk, below investment grade. In the eurozone, only Greece is also rated junk by all the agencies.

The markets are pricing in a 65 per cent chance that Portugal will default over the next five years, according to credit default swaps as these instruments, which protect investors from default, leapt to record highs this week. Portuguese bond prices have slumped to levels considered by many investors to be in default territory. Bond prices for benchmark 10-year debt were trading at 52 per cent of par, recovering from levels below 50 per cent on Monday.

Elisabeth Afseth, fixed-income analyst at Investec Capital Markets, said: "The growing worry that Greece will default is now hitting Portugal because of contagion fears. If Greece defaults, then the worry is so will Portugal. We have seen how quickly this crisis can spread." Fitch, the rating agency, warned on Tuesday that Greece was likely to default in March when Athens is due to pay 14.5 billion euros in bonds.

The Fitch comments come after Moritz Kraemer, head of Standard & Poor's rating agency's European sovereign ratings unit, said on Monday Greece would default shortly on its debt obligations. Parker said that Fitch believed that even a voluntary agreement by private investors to take a haircut on Greek debt would constitute a default.

"We have said for a long time that we don't think this PSI is the way to go and we would treat it as a default. It clearly is a default, however they try to spin it," he said. Parker said the worst result would would be a disorderly default. "That, would be, for us, the really damaging situation, but one which we are certainly not expecting to happen because, clearly, in a rational situation you would think Greek politicians and European policy makers would ensure that it doesn't happen."

In an interview with the Germany daily Die Welt, Brok said that "the downgrade is a targeted attack on Europe by the American rating agency." Insisting that there were no "plausible grounds" for the downgrades, Brok continued, "Consequently, the S&P downgrade is a matter of interests. They have declared a currency war on us."

Asked whether he meant that the United States is "waging financial war" on Europe, Brok specified, "Certain forces in the USA, in particular in the world of finance. It is evident that their one and only aim is in this way to promote Anglo-Saxon interests at Europe's cost. They want to shatter the eurozone, in order to make money," he added.

A member of the European Parliament since 1980, Brok is presently the foreign affairs spokesperson of the parliamentary group of the European People's Party (EPP). The EPP, which includes the German Christian Democrats, has the largest group of deputies in the parliament. Brok was previously, from 1999 to 2007, chair of the parliament's foreign affairs committee. According to EUobserver, he is expected to reclaim the latter post when committee chairs are reshuffled next week. The editors of Die Welt emphasize that he "is known as an excellent connoisseur of the USA."

The bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House and the Protect IP Act in the Senate, are backed by major media companies and are mostly intended to curtail the illegal downloading and streaming of TV shows and movies online. But the tech industry fears that, among other things, they will give media companies too much power to shut down sites that they say are abusing copyrights. The legislation has jolted technology leaders, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, who are not accustomed to having their free-wheeling online world come under attack.

One response is Wednesday's protest, which will direct anyone visiting Google and many other Web sites to pages detailing the tech industry's opposition to the bills. Wikipedia, run by a nonprofit organization, is going further than most sites by actually taking material offline - no doubt causing panic among countless students who have a paper due. It said the move was meant to spark greater public opposition to the bills, which could restrict its freedom to publish.

"Escalation of the crisis would spare no-one," the report's author warned. Referring to the eurozone crisis and its potential to impact growth in rich and poor countries, Andrew Burns said: "Developed and developing-country growth rates could fall by as much or more than in 2008/09. Developing world needs to prepare for global economic slowdown says World Bank. The importance of contingency planning cannot be stressed enough."

Andrew Walker, BBC World Service Economics correspondent comments: "The World Bank has a warning for the developing world: prepare for the worst. In its Global Economic Prospects, the bank does forecast continued growth, but warns there is a risk of a worse outcome: of another crisis as bad as what followed Lehman in 2008. So could the developing countries cope? After all, they weathered the previous global recession relatively well. The Bank's view is that they, for the most part, are in better in shape than the rich nations.

Some have scope to boost government spending and should identify now what would most help development and the poor. But others don't have that room for manoeuvre and will need to make cuts if there is a prolonged downturn."

Some policymakers worry that a recent spike in credit card usage could mean that people, many of whom are struggling on incomes that have lagged inflation, are taking out new debt just to meet the costs of day-to-day living. American households "have been spending recently in a way that did not seem in line with income growth. So somehow they've been doing that through perhaps additional credit card usage," Chicago Federal Reserve President Charles Evans said on Friday. "If they saw future income and employment increasing strongly then that would be reasonable. But I don't see that. So I've been puzzled by this," he said.

After a few years of relative frugality, the amount of money that Americans are saving has fallen back to its lowest level since December 2007 when the recession began. The personal saving rate dipped in November to 3.5 percent, down from 5.1 percent a year earlier, according to the US Commerce Department. Jeff Fielkow, an executive vice president at a recycling company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, contributed less to retirement savings and significantly cut back on dining in restaurants and taking vacations in order to keep college savings on track for his two children. "We would love to save more," he said, "but we're doing the best we can."

"Americans are still coming to terms with fact they're not going to earn as much income as they once thought and they are not going to have as much wealth," said Vitner at Wells Fargo. "They are now trying to work out how they are going to have to adjust their lifestyle to fit that."

There has been a great deal of cover up and secrecy regarding the ongoing bee deaths, enraging environmentalists and activists alike. About one year ago I reported on how the USDA and EPA knew why a series of 'mysterious' downfalls were occurring with crops, birds, and bees. Although technological products like cell phone towers and cell phones are hurting the bee population, it was actually the pesticide brought to you by Bayer which was causing the damage, and the USDA knew of it all along. In my article, I reported:

Just as many potential explanations arose over the mysterious bird deaths, many different theories have been proposed to explain the bee decline. Electromagnetic radiation, malnutrition, and climate have all taken the heat of critics looking for answers. Recently, however, a document was leaked revealing that a bee-killing pesticide put in use by the EPA may be to blame. Adding to the controversy, more records have emerged showing that the USDA was fully aware of the pesticide's threat to not only bees, but humans... Neonicotinoids, the particular type of pesticides used, are absorbed systemically into plants, including the pollen and nectar. Once the bees begin to pollinate, they also absorb the insecticide, and die.

Dr Jeffrey Pettis is a US government researcher and leader at the Beltville, Maryland bee lab. Pettis' completed his research on how Bayer's pesticide is contributing to the bee decline was completed 2 years ago, though it was never able to be published. He finally received an opportunity to share his research when he was interviewed for the film "the Strange Disappearance of the Bees". Pettis states: [It] was completed almost two years ago but it has been too long in getting out. I have submitted my manuscript to a new journal but cannot give a publication date or share more of this with you at this time.

At this point a lot of German politicians are talking as if a Greek default is a foregone conclusion. For example, Michael Fuchs, the deputy leader of Angela Merkel's political party, recently made the following statement: "I don't think that Greece, in its current condition, can be saved." But that is not entirely accurate. Greece could be saved, but the Germans don't want to make the deep financial sacrifices necessary to save Greece. So instead they are going to let Greece default.

Many prominent voices in the financial world that have been watching all of this play out are now openly declaring that Greece is about to default. Moritz Kraemer, the head of S&P's European sovereign ratings unit, made the following statement on Bloomberg Television on Monday: "Greece will default very shortly. Whether there will be a solution at the end of the current rocky negotiations I cannot say."

You might want to go back and read that again.

One of the top officials at one of the top credit rating agencies in the world publicly declared on television that "Greece will default very shortly." That should chill you to your bones. If the EU allows Greece to default, that would be a signal to investors that the EU would allow Italy, Spain and Portugal to all default someday too. Confidence in the bonds of those countries would disintegrate and bond yields would go through the roof.

Once again, it is important to emphasize the role that confidence plays in our financial system. The entire global financial system runs on credit. Banks and investors lend out money because they have confidence that they will be paid back. When you take that confidence away, the system does not work. Let us hope that the folks over in Europe understand this, because right now we are steamrolling toward a credit crunch that could potentially make 2008 look tame by comparison.

Eshel, whose remarks were made at a press briefing in Jerusalem, warned that a nuclear-armed Iran would set off a regional nuclear arms race resulting in "a global nuclear jungle." His warning was in reference to statements by former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al Faisal that, should Tehran aquire nuclear weapons, Riyadh would follow suit. Israel has warned for years that Iran's drive for nuclear weapons must be stopped.

Last week, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Iran's economy is "wobbling" and called for Western nations to impose tough sanctions on Iran. On Tuesday, Israel's minister of strategic affairs Moshe Yaalon slammed the Obama administration saying "election-season considerations" were stopping the White House from taking decisive action vis-a-vis Tehran. Obama, Yaalon indicated, is concerned that an armed conflict with Iran could cost him a second term in the White House.

At question time, he said Britain wanted to see a "strong and dynamic" eurozone and European economy. But he stressed it was for the eurozone countries to "take the lead in supporting the euro as a currency". Lord Sassoon also indicated that Britain would be prepared to stump up more cash to tackle the crisis if the IMF requested it. "The Government sees the role of the IMF to support individual countries and not to support currencies."

"If the IMF puts forward a case, as it may well do, for an increase in its resources, if there is a strong case the UK will, as it has always done in the past, support the IMF in increasing resources as required," he said. Tory former chancellor Lord Lawson of Blaby said: "There is only one thing as worrying as the collapse of the eurozone and that's the continuation of the eurozone." He said it has been shown to be "fundamentally flawed and the cause of all these problems".

Lord Lawson said ministers needed to look at the risk of a banking meltdown, adding: "If it should prove necessary for the UK Government to rescue any British banks, they should do so on much tougher terms than the ludicrously soft terms which the previous administration used."

One refugee got 170,000 pounds while two others had 150,000 pounds each. In 2009, one was awarded 200,000 pounds. Over the three years, 20 claims were settled for more than 100,000 pounds for incidents such as being detained too long or being hurt in custody. In some cases the money is given to failed asylum seekers after they have left Britain. Tory MP Priti Patel, who uncovered the figures, said: "Many of those receiving compensation will be illegal immigrants who should not even be in Britain."

Amid fresh warnings of Greek default, Charles Dallara, director of the Institute of International Finance (IIF), flew from Washington to Athens on Tuesday night to try to agree a deal before the European finance minister's summit on Monday. Sources close to the bondholders told The Daily Telegraph there was "enough movement" from officials representing Greece, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Union (EU) to persuade Mr Dallara to meet with them.

Bondholders are resisting pressure to take losses of more than 50 per cent on their bonds. They are also pushing for higher coupons on fresh Greek paper. The IIF, which has been representing private sector bondholders during the tortuous talks, said it was committed to "seeking an agreement on a voluntary debt exchange for Greece" and appealed to officials to "work in good faith toward this end with a sense of urgency".

Greece must reach a deal with bondholders to secure the 130 billion euros bail-out it needs before Athens runs out of money in March.

However, the country is likely to default anyway, a director of Fitch has warned. Edward Parker, head of the credit rating's sovereign group, told reporters: "It is going to happen. Greece is insolvent so it will default."