The resulting falls in share prices around the world make the lead for the Independent and the Financial Times. The Guardian says the events add to the political wreckage littering Europe. In the words of the Times, the German-inspired doctrine of financial rigour is spurring revolt across the single currency bloc.

"It makes the criminal business one of the largest economies in the world, one of the top 20 economies," said Yury Fedotov, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), describing it as a threat to security and economic development. The figure was calculated recently for the first time by the UNODC and World Bank, based on data for 2009, and no comparisons are yet available, Fedotov told a news conference.

Speaking on the opening day of a week-long meeting of the international Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ), he suggested the situation may be worsening "but to corroborate this feeling I need more data". He said up to $40 billion is lost through corruption in developing countries annually and illicit income from human trafficking amounts to $32 billion every year.

"According to some estimates, at any one time, 2.4 million people suffer the misery of human trafficking, a shameful crime of modern day slavery," Fedotov said separately in a speech. He said terrorist groups in some cases were turning to crime to help fund their operations: "There are even instances where terrorists are evolving into criminal entrepreneurs in their own right."

Top ECB policymakers, attending the International Monetary Fund's spring meetings, politely but firmly rebuffed the IMF's call that the bank should cut its policy interest rate below 1 percent and be prepared to provide more public funding to banks to reduce the risk of a new flare-up of the crisis.

"It's a free world, we take note of this, but let me say that none of the advice of the IMF has been discussed by the Governing Council, in recent times at least," ECB President Mario Draghi told a news conference on Friday. And the ECB delegation to Washington had nothing to say, at least publicly, about a fresh suggestion by US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner that the ECB had a role to play in helping European economies through tough reforms ahead.

"We think we have done our task in the last months by quite a number of standard and non-standard measures we have taken," ECB executive board member Joerg Asmussen said on Friday on the sidelines of the IMF meetings. He said the ball was now in the court of euro zone governments, which are trying to narrow budget deficits and undertake other reforms to restore market confidence and generate growth.

A day after advanced and emerging countries agreed to double the firepower of the International Monetary Fund to help contain the crisis, the IMF's governing panel said on Saturday that the 17-nation euro area must cut government debt burdens further, push bold economic reforms and stabilize financial systems.

Debt problems will resurface and growth will stumble unless these steps are taken, the head of the IMF's governing panel, Singapore's finance minister, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, warned. An uneasy calm returned to world financial markets after the Greek crisis subsided but the IMF is concerned that without strong action fresh tensions will erupt, sapping global growth.

The IMF panel said all advanced economies needed plans to rein in deficits, but it singled out the euro zone as crucial to revitalizing strong growth. The euro area, the world's second-largest economic bloc, already has slipped into a mild recession, weakening its major export partner China and other parts of emerging Asia, while growth in the United States remains sluggish.

It is first time the two navies have conducted such drills, although both countries have participated in four military exercises since 2005. They come amid tensions with China's neighbours over territorial claims. Six countries claim competing sovereignty over areas in the South China Sea, which is believed to contain huge deposits of oil and gas.

That has led to occasional flare-ups and competition to occupy islands, reefs and sandbars. Last week the US and Philippines began joint military exercises in the South China Sea. China said on Thursday that these drills were aimed at upholding regional peace and some analysts say they are also a sign of closer ties between the regional giants. "This joint military exercise is a long scheduled one between China and Russia in order to uphold regional peace and stability," AFP quotes foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin as saying.

The two men will face each other in a second-round run-off on 6 May. Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen came third with 20% of the vote ahead of seven other candidates. The poll was dominated by economic concerns.

Afterwards, Mr Hollande said he was "best placed to become the next president of the republic" and that Mr Sarkozy had been punished by voters. It is the first time a French president running for re-election has failed to win the first round since the start of the Fifth Republic in 1958.

Mark Rutte, who is a key ally of Germany and the eurozone’s “hardliners” on financial discipline, has called an emergency cabinet meeting after budget talks collapsed at the weekend. He is expected to resign today and announce snap elections, pushing yet another “core” eurozone country into political and economic uncertainty.

In France, early polls pointed to a victory of Francois Hollande in the first round of the presidential elections setting the stage for a run-off between the socialist challenger and incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy on May 6th. Mr Hollande has pledged to renegotiate the European fiscal pact that binds countries to a 3 per cent deficit limit by next year.

The “non-negotiable” fiscal pact, which was vetoed by David Cameron, triggered the collapse of the coalition government in the Netherlands. Geert Wilders, the far-right leader, said he could not support the €16 billion (£13 billion) of cuts needed to meet the 3 per cent target. He wouldn’t allow Dutch citizens to “pay out of their pockets for the senseless demands of Brussels” he said.

According to IMF officials, a number of other countries have attached similar conditions to their contributions, potentially limiting the new bail-out fund’s firepower. Although the weekend’s agreement to double the IMF’s war chest to around $800 billion has been widely welcomed, the small print could partially undermine rescue efforts and confidence in the deal.

Several countries including the UK need the Seoul deal on quotas ratified by the US – the IMF’s largest member – to release funding headroom under a technical arrangement known as a “NAB rollback”. Without the rollback, politicians would have to secure parliamentary approval for any increase in IMF resources – a process which itself could take more than a year. No such conditions are attached to the eurozone’s $200 billion of fresh commitments, however.

The IMF also still has to finalise contribution terms. Brazil is demanding a bigger share of the IMF vote in return for a bi-lateral loan, while China has been lobbying for the fund to soften its rhetoric on China’s exchange rate policy. China is also not expected to quantify its support for the IMF until after a new leader is named.

They demanded the ‘opt-in’ measure last week after it emerged that children were becoming addicted to sexual content on the web even before reaching their teens. But, despite previous pledges to get tough on the issue, ministers are instead leaning towards a less stringent option under which internet providers would merely give users the opportunity to filter out pornography more easily.

Under these proposals, subscribers would be asked a ‘yes or no’ question about whether they wish to continue being able to access adult material, enabling parents to block access for their children. The question will be asked on only one occasion. But MPs and charities say this will not adequately safeguard children because it will rely on their parents being responsible and proactive enough to ask for access to be blocked.

In addition, it could be children who see the question first and answer it, not the parents – defeating the object. They say that only by ensuring children have as little chance as possible of seeing online porn – by blocking access as standard – can they be adequately protected.

It has tumbled against sterling, which is good news for those taking trips abroad, but is indicative of the fragility of Europe’s currency union. The reason for its weakness is that the economic conditions some countries must meet under the pact are politically and socially impossible. The leaders of the International Monetary Fund, meeting this week in Washington, know this, which is why the IMF has said — for the first time — that it can envisage the euro collapsing.

Europe’s leaders are desperate to avoid the break-up of the euro, because more than a currency is at stake. The whole credibility of the European project — and of its political leaders — depends on the euro’s survival. It seems the rest of Europe will do almost anything to preserve the currency union. There have already been bail-outs for Portugal, Ireland and, most notably, Greece, primarily underwritten by the Germans. Italy is in trouble, again. But the biggest problem is Spain

It elected a new, conservative, prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, last November. Quite fairly, he blamed the country’s dire economic state (exemplified by an almost 25 per cent rate of unemployment) on his socialist predecessor. However, to meet the demands of the European Central Bank, its German paymasters and the European Commission, Mr Rajoy must make even deeper cuts than his electorate expected. The truth is nobody thinks Spain can sustain such an austerity programme.

Nobody, that is, apart from the head-in-the-sand lunatics in Brussels, Frankfurt and Berlin who wish the political project of a federal Europe with a single currency to be driven ahead, whatever the price. The only realistic solution to Spain’s problems is to allow it to default on its debts in an orderly fashion, and re-establish a devalued peseta, which would eventually allow it to export its way out of trouble. For the moment, that is not allowed.

The timing of all this is frightening, for the tectonic plates of Europe’s politics are also about to move. Tomorrow, France holds the first of two rounds of its presidential election. Opinion polls show the incumbent, Nicolas Sarkozy, is trailing his socialist rival, Francois Hollande. Mr Hollande has threatened to tear up last year’s EU fiscal pact, and with good reason. He knows that, after the election, France will find it politically impossible to keep to the EU’s stringent fiscal rules.

The presidential contest has a second round on May 6, where the two remaining candidates go head-to-head. That same day Greece goes to the polls. Anti-austerity candidates look likely to win in Athens, leaving Greece’s future compliance with the fiscal pact — and therefore its future membership of the euro — in serious doubt. These elections bring closer the moment of truth for Europe.

As the government scrambles for every tax dollar it can get its hands on, even though they already gave every Spaniard $23,000 Euros in debt last year alone (approximately $32,500), they are now banning all large cash business transactions. Why? So they can track the transactions and make sure that people and business are paying taxes. Being able to track the transactions is also aimed to combat the growing black market in Spain.

They are not even making a pretense anymore that the West is run via market economies. As we have long predicted, the phony "sovereign debt" crisis in Europe is being used to justify all sorts of authoritarian measures. It is government politicians that gladly borrowed what European banks threw at them. And somehow the upshot earlier this week is that Spanish citizens now lose the right to conduct many transactions in cash.

Spectactularly, the reports don't even bother to hide the real point. The Spanish government wants to ensure that it can "track transactions and make sure that people and businesses are paying taxes." It is surely part of a larger meme having to do with a "cashless" society. Just recently the UK Telegraph asked "Is mobile the way we'll all be paying?" The answer, as can be expected, was a qualified yes, but issued in the predictable upbeat way.

This callous disregard for travelers' rights merely paraphrases the words of Homeland Security director Janet Napolitano, who shares, with the president, ultimate responsibility for all TSA travesties since 2009. In November 2010, with the groping policy only a few weeks old, Napolitano dismissed complaints by saying "people [who] want to travel by some other means" have that right. (In other words: if you don't like it, don't fly.)

But now TSA is invading travel by other means, too. No surprise, really: as soon as she established groping in airports, Napolitano expressed her desire to expand TSA jurisdiction over all forms of mass transit. In the past year, TSA's snakelike VIPR (Visual Intermodal Prevention and Response) teams have been slithering into more and more bus and train stations – and even running checkpoints on highways – never in response to actual threats, but apparently more in an attempt to live up to the inspirational motto displayed at the TSA's air marshal training center since the agency's inception: "Dominate. Intimidate. Control."

Anyone who rode the bus in Houston, Texas during the 2-10pm shift last Friday faced random bag checks and sweeps by both drug-sniffing dogs and bomb-sniffing dogs (the latter being only canines necessary if "preventing terrorism" were the actual intent of these raids), all courtesy of a joint effort between TSA VIPR nests and three different local and county-level police departments. The new Napolitano doctrine, then: "Show us your papers, show us everything you've got, justify yourself or you're not allowed to go about your everyday business."

The USGS said the quake was recorded offshore, 51 miles south-southeast of the town of Manokwari, at a depth of 18.5 miles. It had initially estimated the magnitude of the tremor at 6.9 and 7.0. At least one major aftershock was recorded. In Manokwari, "the quake was felt quite strongly for a couple of seconds, and residents ran away from houses and buildings," said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the spokesman for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency. There were no immediate reports of damage, although the office is still waiting for reports from the regions, Nugroho added.

The more than 50 institutions that received approvals to operate remotely piloted aircraft are more varied than many outsiders and privacy experts previously knew. They include not only agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security but also smaller ones such as the police departments in North Little Rock, Arkansas, and Ogden, Utah, as well the University of North Dakota and Nicholls State University in Louisiana.

The information, released by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, came to light as the Federal Aviation Administration gears up to advance the widespread use of the drones. By the fall of 2015, Congress wants the agency to integrate remotely piloted aircraft throughout US airspace.

Although the documents don't indicate how the aircraft will be used, the disclosures likely will fuel privacy concerns involving drones. On Thursday, Democratic Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Republican Representative Joe Barton of Texas asked the acting administrator of the FAA to answer questions about the privacy implications of increased drone use.

"Many drones are designed to carry surveillance equipment, including video cameras, infrared thermal imagers, radar and wireless network 'sniffers,'" the representatives wrote in their letter to Michael Huerta. Now that the FAA, under pressure from lawmakers and businesses, is pushing to increase the use of drones, it has "the responsibility to ensure that the privacy of individuals is protected and that the public is fully informed about who is using drones in public airspace and why," they wrote.

The FAA declined to comment.

As it became clear that it would be 2013 before Britain handed over its controversial £10 billion share of the global fighting fund, the chancellor backed plans for closer integration of the eurozone through common euro bonds. "Boosting IMF resources will not be enough on its own to secure the recovery," Osborne told the fund's key policymaking committee. "We also need a strong and co-ordinated global policy response if we are to exit the crisis."

The IMF was bracing itself for the judgment of the financial markets on the agreement to increase the size of its firewall by at least $430 billion (£267 billion). Doubts remained about whether the leading developing countries – Brazil in particular – would deliver on their pledge to increase the resources available to tackle a fresh outbreak of global turbulence.

The so-called Bric countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China – have privately agreed that they will only make a decision on how much to contribute when the G20 group of advanced and emerging economies meets in Mexico in June. Sources said the Brics wanted to see hard evidence that they would have a bigger say in the running of the IMF before making firm commitments. UK sources said that Britain's £10 billion would only become available once changes to the IMF's governance had been completed, and they did not expect this to happen until after the US presidential elections in November.