Father Ninni Treppiedi was sacked from serving as a priest after a series of church funds transactions made by his parish came to anti-mafia prosecutors’ attention this spring. The dealings, involving millions of euros, date back to 2007-2009. Prosecutors suspect Treppiedi was involved in money-laundering operations linked to Matteo Messina Denaro, a Mafia Godfather on the run. The cleric’s former post in Aclamo, near Trapani, is said to be the richest parish in the Mafia stronghold of Sicily.

Trapani prosecutor Marcello Viola made the request to disclose Treppiedi’s account details over six weeks ago. But the Vatican, though confirming the request has been received, maintains the issue is not mafia-related. “The letter the Vatican received on May 9 did not speak of any money laundering or mafia issues. It contained concerns over shortages and fraud made by ecclesiastical authorities in the Diocese of Trapani,” the Vatican spokesman told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera on Monday.

The first reports on the scandal emerged in the Italian media two weeks after the head of the Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was ousted after receiving a unanimous vote of no-confidence from bank overseers. The banker is under investigation for another case of alleged money laundering. But there is speculation that the actual reason behind the no-confidence vote is that Tedeschi was aware of possible mafia links and leaked names and accounts details to police.

Described in two papers in Nature and a raft of reports in other journals, the data released Wednesday describe microbes of the skin, saliva, nostrils, guts and other areas of 242 adults in tiptop health. The $170-million, federally funded Human Microbiome Project also cataloged the genes contained within this zoo of life. The results shed light on the hum of microbial activity inside us as nutrients are chopped and guzzled, gas and other wastes are expelled, and bugs send chemical messages to one another, jostling for supremacy or attracting new neighbors to help keep their community going.

The research is important because it gives scientists a reference point of what the microbial community looks like in healthy people, and they plan to use it to study how changes in a person's microbiome can lead to illness. A spate of studies in the last few years has documented potential links to conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease, asthma and obesity.

Each of us is home to about 100 trillion microscopic life forms — a figure that's about 10 times higher than the number of cells in the human body. In a 200-pound adult, these organisms can weigh a combined 2 to 6 pounds. The team had set out to identify a "core microbiome," a base-line set of flora that would always be found in the mouth, say, or the large intestine. They didn't really find this, but their analysis revealed that each place in the body seems to have a distinct set of metabolic abilities, be it digestion of sugars in the mouth or of complex carbohydrates in the large intestine. In different people, different microbes appear to be performing the same tasks.

Some 41% correctly linked butter to a dairy cow, with 8% linking it to beef cattle, while 67% were able to link eggs to an image of a hen but 11% thought they came from wheat or maize. A total of 6% of those questioned knew that salad dressing could come from rapeseed oil, compared with the national average among all age groups of 24%.

Although four in 10 young adults (43%) considered themselves knowledgeable about where their food comes from, the results revealed a "shocking" lack of knowledge about how the most basic food is produced, the charity said. Leaf chief executive Caroline Drummond said: "We often hear reports that our food knowledge may be declining but this new research shows how bad the situation is becoming. Despite what they think, young adults are clearly becoming removed from where their food comes from."

"Three in 10 adults born in the 1990s haven't visited a farm in more than 10 years, if at all, which is a real shame as our farmers not only play an important role in food production but are passionate about engaging and reconnecting consumers too." The charity, which is organising an Open Farm Sunday event this weekend, also found almost two-thirds of young adults (64%) did not know that new potatoes would be available from British farms in June, and one in 10 (10%) thought they took less than a month to grow.

The last published opinion polls showed the conservative New Democracy party, which backs the €130 billion ($160 billion) bailout that is keeping Greece afloat, running neck and neck with the leftist Syriza party, which wants to cancel the rescue deal. As the election approaches, publishing polls is now legally banned and in the ensuing information vacuum, party officials have been leaking contradictory "secret polls".

On Tuesday, one rumor making the rounds was that Syriza was leading by a wide margin. "This is nonsense," one reputable Greek pollster said on condition of anonymity. "Our polls show the picture has not changed much since the last polls were published. Parties may be leaking these numbers on purpose to boost their standing." The pollster said there was some consolidation, with voters turning to New Democracy and Syriza from smaller parties but the pool of undecided voters remained unusually large so close to the election and the result was impossible to predict.

Both parties say they want Greece to remain in the single currency but Syriza has pledged to scrap the bailout agreement signed in March which has imposed some of the toughest austerity measures seen in Europe in decades. The European Union and International Monetary Fund have warned that Greece, which has only enough cash to last for a few weeks, must stick to the conditions of the bailout deal or risk seeing funds cut off.

The commentary was published by Fars News Agency, which is run by the Revolutionary Guards tightly and usually publishes official opinion. It indicates that Iran is changing gears, said Erick Staklebeck, who writes for the Christian Broadcasting Network. Staklebeck noted that the Islamic world already has nuclear weapons because Pakistan is known to have approximately 110 such weapons.

“If Pakistan uses one of its nukes, it will be to the East, against its arch-rival, India. Iran, on the other hand, clearly has its sights set on the United States, Europe and Israel,” he wrote. The commentary, which he said he received from a friend, was written by Alireza Forghani, a former governor of southern Iran’s Kish Province and an analyst and a strategy specialist “in the camp of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.”

“Having a nuclear bomb is our right. Israel would have been destroyed completely 30 years ago” but remains because of its assumed possession of nuclear warheads. Staklebeck commented that the article indicates that Iranian leaders are “telegraphing their intentions towards us and are very close to acquiring nuclear weapons that will make their apocalyptic visions a reality.”

The fact that Putin's first destination was Minsk is perceived as a clear signal. It is true that Russia's new president is seeking to consolidate the alliance of the post-Soviet countries which is destined to cause conflicts. Berlin seeks to strengthen its position in the Ukraine as well as in Belarus. Even though a certain alienation has been growing between Berlin and Moscow, economic ties remain strong. Europe's dependency on Russian natural gas is growing, as well as Russia's significance for Germany's export industries. East European and post-Soviet central Asian countries are buying more German products than the USA and China combined.

The growing political discord between Berlin and Moscow, which are supposed to be enjoying a "strategic partnership," are contrasted by the increasing economic interdependence of the two countries - and the growing significance of Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet countries for Germany's export economy. In fact, over the past few years, the German industry has reinforced its efforts by taking steps to further expand in Eastern Europe, compensating its export losses in the crisis riddled Euro zone.

Russia, at the same time, registers a clear six billion Euro trade surplus in relationship to Germany, even if it is less than in 2011. This has resulted from Russia's voluminous export of fossil energy sources. In Russia, the state-controlled energy sector is by far the most important economic sector of the country, which accounts for a large part of the country's receipts in foreign currency and budget surpluses.

Andreas Dombret, a key board member of the Bundesbank, said the grand plan by Brussels is premature and unworkable as constructed. "A banking union is a sensible way forward as long as liability and control are aligned. What I mean is you don't give somebody your credit card if you don't know what he or she is going to do with it." Mr Dombret said a pan-EMU deposit-guarantee scheme and a debt resolution fund would require "a genuine, democratically legitimated fiscal union" and a new treaty.

The Bundebank's vice-president Sabine Lautenschlaeger hammered home the point in what is a clearly co-ordinated push to check the plan. "The result would be a pooling of the governments' liabilities through the back door," she said. "Whoever is footing the bill must also have a right of control, particularly when it comes to the large sums that are seen in banking crises," she added, alluding to rulings by German courts that unquantifiable EU liabilities breach Germany's constitution.

Chancellor Angela Merkel endorsed the tough line at a party conference yesterday, insisting that Germany will not accept variants of debt pooling or eurobonds until Europe has created a machinery of joint government. "We can't take part in things that lead us into an even deeper disaster," she said. "We want more Europe, but a Europe in which joint liability and joint control go hand in hand. What is not acceptable is shared liability and control remaining in national hands."

Mrs Merkel said the failure of the European Banking Authority to uncover festering losses in Spanish banks in a series of stress tests showed that national regulators - acting out of "misguided national pride" - cannot be trusted to do the job.

Mr Barroso claimed the move was designed to increase stability following the eurozone debt crisis. But the proposal was not welcomed in London as it was seen as another bid by the EU to extend its control over British interests. As well as cross-border regulation, the banking union proposal would envisage an EU-wide deposit guarantee scheme and rescue fund paid for by levies on financial institutions.

This would hit the City of London particularly hard - an event which Chancellor George Osborne has already claimed he will fight 'tooth and nail' to prevent. A Downing Street spokeswoman said today that Britain would not subject its banks to the EU-wide supervisor being proposed by Barroso. She explained: "Our view is pretty clear on that. That is a matter for the eurozone if they feel that that is the next step forward. As the Prime Minister and Chancellor have said, there is some remorseless logic about that, but that is a matter for them. Britain will not be involved."

Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne have already made clear they believe a banking union should be only for the 17 nations which use the single currency.

Spiegel's cover story about the sale of German-built submarines to Israel, which were then equipped with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, has provoked a storm of debate in Germany and internationally. According to extensive research carried out by Spiegel, Israel is equipping submarines built in the northern German city of Kiel and partly paid for by the German government with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. Three Dolphin-class submarines have already been delivered to Israel, and three more will be delivered by 2017. The contract for the sixth submarine was signed only recently.

On Monday, opposition parties called for an explanation from the German government and more transparency on weapons deals. "The German government needs to reveal the facts and make a report to the relevant parliamentary committee," Cem Özdemir, co-leader of the Green Party, told Spiegel Online. The opposition center-left Social Democrats (SPD) have been muted in their reaction, however. In 2005, former SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder personally approved the delivery of submarines to Israel.

The German government has neither confirmed nor denied the Spiegel report, which was published Monday. Government spokesman Steffen Seibert said that the government did not get involved "in speculation about a possible later armament" of the submarines, adding that the vessels were delivered "without weapons." Philipp Missfelder, parliamentary foreign policy spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union, told the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung that the Israeli government was solely responsible for the decision about how the submarines were equipped. "We have to respect that," he said.

The German federal state of Saxony in May 2012: Two men in the city of Bautzen assault a Colombian exchange student, calling him names and kicking him. In Hoyerswerda, right-wing extremists lay siege to the office of a member of the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, smashing windows and attacking an employee. In Limbach-Oberfrohna, neo-Nazis attack a center for alternative education. In Geithain, an explosive device detonates in front of Pizzeria Bollywood, a restaurant owned by a Pakistani.

Seven months have passed since it emerged that German authorities had for years been unaware of the existence of a far-right terrorist cell calling itself the "National Socialist Underground" (NSU) that murdered 10 people, most of them Turkish immigrants, in a nationwide killing spree that went on from 2000 until 2007. When this group, based in Zwickau, Saxony, first came to light, politicians declared their intention to tackle and root out the far-right problem, but nothing has come of those declarations. "What's happening in Saxony is a scandal," says Hajo Funke, a political scientist in Berlin. There is no other German state where neo-Nazis have such a high profile, he says, adding that the regional government was refusing to take action against it.

The members of the Initiative for an Open-Minded Geithain have gathered today at the town hall. Krumbholz has invited Mohammad Sayal to the meeting, the owner of Pizzeria Bollywood, the local restaurant attacked the previous weekend. Sayal describes the harassment he's experienced from neo-Nazis in the five months since he opened his restaurant. The very first night, they smashed his windows. In May, a group of 10 of them showed up in front of his restaurant, wearing masks and wielding knives. They kicked at the door, threw a stone through the window and shouted, "You shit foreigner, we'll get you. If you don't get out of here, we'll kill you." A week later, an explosive device wrecked his restaurant.

The neo-Nazis publish their adversaries' names, addresses and pictures online. The local "Anti-Antifa" - a name for right-wing extremist groups that oppose the "Antifa," or antifascist, movement - posted that left-wingers people in Geithain's should expect "disciplinary measures, house calls and car damage." The neo-Nazis also announced the attack on Florian Krumbholz online, using a video as a call for violence against him: "Leftists have names, leftists have addresses. Let's march and show our strength." A few weeks before the attack, on Good Friday 2010, neo-Nazis spray-painted the Krumbholzes' garage with the slogans "Death to the Red Front" and "We'll get you, Florian."

The attack at the gas station lasted just a few seconds. Surveillance footage shows the assailant kicking Florian in the chest, then driving his fist into Florian's forehead. The attacker, Albert R, received just a suspended sentence at his initial trial, despite having a considerable criminal record.

As the clock ticks down to Greece's crunch election on June 17, which is being seen as a referendum on the country's membership of the euro zone, the warnings that European leaders need to act to prevent a collapse of the currency union are getting stronger by the day.

Now, Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has warned that the euro zone has less than three months to get its act together. In an interview broadcast on Monday evening, Lagarde told the television station CNN that action to save the euro is needed in "more shortly (sic) than three months." She was referring to a recent prediction by billionaire investor George Soros that Europe has three months to save the euro.

"The construction of the euro zone has taken time," Lagarde told CNN. "And it's a work in construction at the moment." The IMF head declined to comment on whether Greece would leave the euro zone. "It's going to be a question of political determination and drive," she said. Many observers fear that Greece will have to return to the drachma if the left-wing anti-austerity Syriza party wins Sunday's election.

Top US economist Nouriel Roubini has also reiterated his warning that time is running out. Pulling the plug on Greece will provoke the "total collapse" of the euro zone, he told the German mass-circulation daily Bild in an interview published Tuesday. If Greece collapses, many investors will panic, causing a run on the banks in Portugal, Spain and Italy, said the economist, who earned the nickname "Dr Doom" by correctly predicting the US subprime crisis.

IS IT ONE MINUTE TO MIDNIGHT IN EUROPE? The failure of German public opinion to grasp the dire state of affairs in Europe today is inviting a repeat of precisely the crisis of the mid 20th century that European integration was designed to avoid. With every increase in the probability of a disorderly Greek exit from the monetary union, the pressure on the Spanish banks increases and with it the danger of a Mediterranean-wide bank run so big that it would overwhelm the European Central Bank. Already there has been a substantial re-nationalization of the European financial system. This centrifugal process could easily continue to the point of complete disintegration.

We find it extraordinary that it should be Germany, of all countries, that is failing to learn from history. Fixated on the non-threat of inflation, today's Germans appear to attach more importance to the year 1923 (the year of hyperinflation) than to the year 1933 (the year democracy died). They would do well to remember how a European banking crisis two years before 1933 contributed directly to the breakdown of democracy not just in their own country but right across the European continent.

Astonishingly few Europeans (including bankers) seem to remember what happened in May 1931 when Creditanstalt, the biggest Austrian bank, had to be bailed out by a government that was itself on the brink of insolvency. The ensuing European bank crisis, which saw the failure of two of Germany's biggest banks, ushered in the second half of the Great Depression. If the first half had been dominated by the American stock market crash, the second was all about European banks going bust.

What happened next? The banking crisis was followed by President Hoover's one-year moratorium on payment of World War I war debts and reparations. Nearly all sovereign borrowers subsequently defaulted on all or part of their external debts, beginning with Germany. Unemployment in Europe reached an agonizing peak in 1932: In July of that year, 49 per cent of German trade union members were out of work.

The political consequences are well known.

After widespread investor optimism on Monday in the wake of the weekend news that Spain would receive up to €100 billion ($125 billion) in emergency aid for its wobbling banks, Tuesday has brought a return to realism. Black stock-exchange numbers have once again nudged back into the red and worries about the survival of the euro zone have returned despite the Spanish bailout.

The apparent skittishness isn't surprising. Greek voters go to the polls on Sunday in an election that many believe could determine whether the country remains in the euro zone or is forced out. Potentially more ominously, numbers released on Monday indicate that the Italian economy is in disastrous shape, having shrunk in the first quarter faster than it has in three years. It is the third quarter in a row that the Italian economy, the euro zone's third largest, has contracted. Many believe that it is merely a question of time before Italy also has to apply for emergency aid from the euro backstop funds.

Meanwhile, despite official optimism from Madrid - and even from the oft-dour German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble - it is doubtful that €100 billion will be enough to save Spain's banking industry and put the euro zone back on the road to recovery. For one, recent history has shown just how quickly banks can run into significant trouble should the economic situation rapidly worsen.

On Monday, Italian Minister of Industry Corrado Passera insisted that his country is not the next bailout candidate. In past cases, such declarations have proven a sure sign that the opposite is true. INDEED, IT IS VERY POSSIBLE THAT THE EURO CRISIS IS NOW BEGINNING TO TIGHTEN ITS GRIP. AND EUROPE IS NOT PREPARED.

In April, a damning Vatican report had accused the group of "corporate dissent" from the Church's teachings against homosexuality, and claimed it was pursuing "radical feminist themes" - accusations fiercely denied by the nuns. The doctrinal officials aimed "to help the LCWR in the important mission of promoting a vision of ecclesiastical communion based on the Church's teachings down the ages," Lombardy said, as the Vatican insists the nuns fall into line.

The three-year inquiry by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which oversees Roman Catholic doctrine, criticised the LCWR in particular for taking liberal stances on contraception, homosexuality and female priests. It found the LCWR had "serious doctrinal problems" and accused them of staying "silent on the right to life" and failing to promote the Church's view of heterosexual family live and sexuality amid debates on the issues in the US.

The nuns have rejected the report, saying that they have not violated any teaching and finding fault with the way it was carried out, complaining that it was shrouded in secrecy. Many said they were hurt by the Vatican's public attack in a report which had "caused scandal and pain throughout the church community, and created greater polarization." Lombardi said the Tuesday's closed-door meeting took place "in a open and cordial atmosphere," but provided no details on the outcome of the talks.

As Europe's banking crisis intensifies and the labor market sputters, the Fed appears increasingly likely to offer more monetary stimulus - despite political opposition, internal reticence and concerns about whether it will be effective. Given an outlook that is weak but not recessionary, the Fed could opt for the relatively low-hanging fruit of extending "Operation Twist," its effort to drive down long-term borrowing costs by selling short-term securities to buy longer-term ones.

Another relatively costless tool it could employ would be to push official guidance for when overnight interest rates are likely to rise, now set at late 2014, even further into the future. Many believe that with government bond yields already near record lows as investors flock to safety, an extension of Twist, which is due to expire at the end of the month, or even outright bond purchases, might not do much good.

Elections in Greece this weekend could be a major factor if they suggest the country is headed toward a euro zone exit, an outcome that could cause financial market chaos and an aggressive Fed response. Christina Romer, a former adviser to President Barack Obama, made the case for additional Fed help in a New York Times column on Monday entitled "It's time for the Fed to step up."

The US economy grew at only a 1.9 percent annual rate in the first quarter and appears to be expanding no more swiftly now, raising concerns that the recovery could sputter. At the same time, US employers added just 69,000 new workers to their payrolls in May, too few to curb the unemployment rate.