Stock markets around the world fell sharply with fears mounting that a euro break-up could lead to renewed financial turmoil. The FTSE-100 index of Britain’s major companies fell by two per cent to 5465, with bank shares hit particularly hard. The cost of Spanish government borrowing also hit a record high since the single currency was introduced because of concerns that the crisis will spread.

Today, François Hollande, the new French president, will be sworn in and, in an indication of the concern gripping Europe, will almost immediately travel to Berlin to hold talks with Mrs Merkel that will be dominated by Greece’s plight. Attempts to form a new government in Athens have been thwarted for the past nine days, although the country’s president will meet all major parties this afternoon to discuss the forming of a “technocratic” administration rather than a coalition.

An outgoing Greek minister warned that the country could descend into “civil war” amid the chaos of a euro exit. “If Greece cannot meet its obligations and serve its debt the pain will be great,” Michalis Chrysohoidis was quoted as telling a local radio station. “What will prevail are armed gangs with Kalashnikovs and which one has the greatest number of Kalashnikovs will count… we will end up in civil war.”

Party leaders, deadlocked since a parliamentary vote nine days ago, will convene at the presidential palace at 2 pm (1100 GMT) but said they had little hope President Karolos Papoulias's offer would resolve a political crisis that has fuelled speculation Greece's days in the euro zone are numbered.

The multi-party political landscape has been in disarray since an inconclusive election on May 6 left parliament divided between supporters and opponents of a €130 billion ($168-billion) EU/IMF bailout, with neither side able to form a coalition that would have a stable majority in the legislature.

If supporters and opponents of the bailout cannot agree a government, the head of state must call a new election in June.

The bailout's main opponents - the surging radical leftist SYRIZA party which now leads opinion polls - said they saw the president's plan for a government of non-partisan experts as nothing but a scheme to impose the harsh wage and pension cuts demanded by the foreign lenders but already rejected by voters.

"We will attend the meeting. But we are sticking to our position. We don't want to consent to any kind of bailout policies, even if they are implemented by non-political personalities," SYRIZA spokesman Panos Skourletis said.

But the turbulence has spread, with the French people having kicked out Nicolas Sarkozy and replaced him with his Socialist rival, Francois Hollande. The new president promises massive new state spending to reinvigorate the economy — even though this flies in the face of the austerity pact championed so sternly by Germany’s Angela Merkel. Today, the two countries’ leaders meet as the financial markets ponder a possible rupture in Franco-German relations. This Merkel-Hollande showdown looks set to be the most decisive European meeting since the end of the Cold War.

Given the growing panic in the markets, the pair probably have only one chance to decide a clear line and save the euro — though even that now looks dubious. But the record of the past few years, as well as the deep ideological gulf between the German and French leaders on the issue of ‘growth versus austerity’, means their meeting will probably produce yet another fudge, and the eurozone will slide further towards disaster. Meanwhile, the Spanish government has been forced to bail out the troubled lending giant Bankia, sending tremors though the stock market.

All this probably sounds very familiar. For more than four years, the headlines have been full of doom and gloom, with the sorry saga of the euro usually at their heart. But the truth is that Europe is approaching the crunch. And in their very different ways, the Greek and French people may have pronounced the death-knell for an economic regime conceived in hubris but now collapsing in ruins. With every passing day, the chances recede that Spain will escape the kind of meltdown that has afflicted Greece and Ireland. With every passing day, too, the chances of the eurozone surviving dwindle still further.

But the election of Francois Hollande may have changed everything. In place of austerity, Mr Hollande proposes to start chucking money around as if it grew on the apple trees of his native Normandy. He has promised to hire 60,000 new teachers, to create 150,000 new public sector jobs, to bring the retirement age down to 60, and to take on the ‘financial elite’ he blames for the crisis. Unfortunately, it is not obvious where the money is going to come from considering that the French economy is in a pretty poor state. In any case, if he sticks to his spending promises, he risks alienating the markets, smashing the European fiscal pact and breaking the alliance with Mrs Merkel.

Spanish and Italian 10-year borrowing costs shot up to their highest levels this year and European stock markets suffered their biggest one-day drop in three weeks. German 10-year bond yields fell to a record low, widening the premium Madrid pays to borrow compared to Berlin to a new euro-era high. “It’s looking alarming right now,” said Luke Spajic, a senior fund manager at Pimco, one of the world’s largest bond investors. “The market is effectively trying to price in a disorderly exit for Greece.”

The chance of Greece falling out of the eurozone – previously seen as a cataclysmic event that many European policymakers had refused to discuss – has attracted renewed speculation following an election that resulted in strong gains for parties opposed to budget cuts imposed as a condition for Greece’s bailout.

European leaders have created a €500 billion eurozone rescue system, the European Stability Mechanism, as a financial firewall. But many analysts and investors have questioned whether it is big enough to rescue the larger economies at risk, such as Spain and Italy. “The firewall is big enough in theory for Spain,” said Justin Knight, a strategist at UBS, but added that the ESM would be likely to face practical difficulties raising large loans. To add to the sombre mood, Moody’s announced on Monday night it was downgrading 26 Italian financial institutions by between one and four notches.

Under normal Greek-debt contracts, if Greece doesn’t pay, it would have only a seven-day grace period. But experts who have pored over all of this have found that one of the key paragraphs from the normally boiler-point language is missing. As a result, Greece will have a 30-day grace period, leading to the possibility of an extended, “Will they?” or “won’t they?” drama.

Here’s what happened. In debt contracts there is a section titled: Events of Default. In a typical Greek bond it says “If the Republic defaults in the payment of principal… and such default is not cured by payment within 7 days from the due date for such payment.” However, that paragraph is missing from tomorrow’s debt payment.

Instead, if Greece chooses not to pay, it will likely fall under a different paragraph: “the Republic is in default in the performance of any other covenant, condition or provision set out in the Notes and continues in default for 30 days after written notice thereof.” If Greece doesn’t pay, it will mean the country officially enters into default.

Experts worry that unemployed seniors face a long-term threat as the impact of lost wages compounds. In what should their be prime earning years, these older workers rely on savings, miss out on potential wages and prematurely tap into Social Security - all at a time when Americans live longer and health care and other living costs are rising.

About 55 percent of jobless seniors, or 1.1 million, have been unemployed for more than six months, up from 23 percent, or less than 200,000, four years earlier, according to a copy of the Government Accountability Office report obtained by Reuters. The GAO, a non-partisan investigative arm of Congress, also found that years of lost work significantly reduced retirement income, particularly for those with defined contribution retirement plans.

"Long-term unemployment has particularly serious implications for older Americans," the GAO said in its report to the Senate Special Committee on Aging. Those seniors who continue looking for work amid a tepid economic recovery confront competition from younger, cheaper workers. They also must keep pace with ever-changing technology. Senator Herb Kohl, chairman of the Special Committee on Aging who is to lead a hearing on the issue on Tuesday, is investigating ways to counter age discrimination and boost seniors' job prospects.

"These are the people we should be most worried about," he said. "With the aging of the baby-boom generation, the fact is that older workers will continue to make up a much larger share of our country's labor force."

Speaking Monday evening, Danny Dayan, the Chairman of the Yesha Regional Council, said that the EU was mistaken if it thought that its condemnation was going to halt construction in Judea and Samaria. “It's time that the EU realized that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are flourishing, and that they will continue. This is a fact that cannot be changed,” he said.

The number of Greeks searching for homes costing more than £1.5 million ($2.4 million) on the website of property agent Savills jumped 39 percent in April compared with the average of the preceding six months, the company said. "The reason Greeks are coming is very simple," said Dinos Joannou, a 65-year-old Cypriot who works in the Athenian Grocery in the Bayswater district of London and has seen growing numbers arrive this year. "Greece is screwed, there are no jobs and it has been run by crooks.”

The number of Europeans buying property in London has grown steadily over the last year as the euro zone debt crisis has worsened but numbers spiked ahead of elections in Greece last weekend that failed to produce a government.

And officials in Berlin insist the costs of the new bail-out fund must be shared among all 27 EU members, including non-eurozone countries such as the UK. The plot was exposed yesterday as markets across Europe were once again plunged into turmoil by the euro crisis. Nervous traders wiped £28.5 billion from the value of London’s leading shares index as fears intensified that Greece will crash out of the euro.

Another day of turmoil saw the FTSE 100 Index close two per cent, or 110 points, lower at 5465.5 as attempts to form a coalition government in Greece continued to stutter. That left the country facing the prospect of another election next month, putting its future in the eurozone in increasing doubt. The uncertainty hit banking shares with Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays and Lloyds Banking Group among the biggest fallers.

The latest plot to dragoon Britain into supporting the crumbling euro was rejected by EU critics last night. Tory MP Peter Bone said: “To bail out the euro after Greek exit would be absurd. The euro is dying on its feet, and to pour more British taxpayers’ money into saving it would be ridiculous. I am sure that the Government will not allow this to happen. If Germany and other countries want to keep throwing good taxpayers’ money after bad, that is up to them but we should have nothing to do with it. It is in the interests of the Greeks, and the rest of Europe, that Greece is allowed to leave the euro.”

Non-sexual websites such as one created by the residents of St Margarets, Middlesex, to act as an online hub for local news and events, and a blog that challenges the impartiality of the BBC, have been blacklisted by mobile networks, a report by the London School of Economics found. Currently, the major mobile networks impose restrictions to block access to content unsuitable for under-18s by default, on the grounds that young people may access the internet from their smartphone unsupervised.

Adult customers who want to access such material must ask for the restrictions to be lifted and provide credit card details to prove their age. The blacklists sometimes go too far, the report says. They have also been imposed on eHow.com, one of the biggest general 'how to' websites, on a church in Sheffield, on a London bar, and on the business website of a graphic designer, the researchers said.

“It can mean a business is cut off from a slice of its market,” said the report, which was produced by the LSE’s Media Policy Project in collaboration with the Open Rights Group, a campaign group which opposes online censorship. “It can simply see people unable to get directions to a bar. It may stop a prominent political organisation from reaching concerned citizens.”

Monetary union cannot last without fiscal union. Fiscal union cannot be achieved without political union. Political union is not acceptable to the peoples of Europe. If the cultures and economies are sufficiently alike, monetary union may be used to back nations into a political union, but Germany and Greece are simply not sufficiently alike. Indeed here in these islands a 300-year-old union is in danger of coming apart in a spasm of incompatibility.

Of course the exit of Greece from the Eurozone will not of itself solve its problems. Those spring from a more extreme version of the socialist delusion all too common here, and which has now propelled Monsieur Hollande into office in France. It rests upon a sense of victimhood. It deludes its victims into the belief that they have less because others have more, and that if "the rich" were to be relieved of their riches for the consumption of the poor, the curse of poverty and inequity would be overcome.

However, the redistribution and consumption of capital wealth is not a mechanism for the creation of wealth; as the adage goes, making the rich poor does not make the poor rich. THE WORST PART OF THIS GREEK TRAGEDY IS THAT THE LONGER THE DELUSION CONTINUES THE MORE TERRIBLE PRICE THAT NOT JUST THE GREEKS, BUT ALL OF US EUROPEANS WILL HAVE TO PAY. Did I hear someone say "Those whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad"?

Worse, even if your prediction is true to the current assessment of Israeli military planners, the timing of an operation is affected by factors that are not entirely in their control: the diplomatic and media environment, American preparations, Iranian countermeasures, Arab cooperation, the weather. Military strategy is not wedding planning. You don’t set a date and work backwards. Even if you were right when you made the prediction, you might turn out to have been wrong by the time the predicted date rolls around.

So what kind of idiot would take the plunge and make such a prediction? My only defense is that I think it makes sense. I’ve never offered a prediction for an attack in the past, because no single date ever made overwhelming sense. It does now. So, caveats aside, here it is: Israel is preparing to deploy military assets to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program in October of 2012. Israel cannot resort to military action while the entire Western world is committed to negotiating. If, however, nothing comes of new talks and sanctions by October, an assault becomes easier to explain.

Which brings us to the most important factor in the October timing of an Israeli strike: the November 2012 presidential elections in the United States. [Mr] Netanyahu sees a moment of opportunity that will likely not be repeated for years to come. From late September to early November, White House decision-making will be driven by President Obama’s electoral needs — not his diplomatic policy. The mullahs are unloved in America, and many American pundits and politicians are on record supporting Israel’s right to defend itself militarily against an Iranian threat. If Israel goes ahead with a strike, can [Mr] Obama afford to be seen as trying to prevent it, effectively protecting the mullahs of Teheran in the process?

Israel might even hope that a credible Israeli threat of a strike just before the elections could lead to the best of all scenarios from Israel’s perspective – an American strike. While the White House seems to imply at regular intervals that Israel should not expect this. [Mr] Obama is surely asking himself if he wouldn’t rather control the confrontation than be dragged into it. If he can achieve meaningful results without incurring heavy losses in American blood or treasure, he would go into election day a wartime president.

The abrupt pulse of electromagnetic radiation from a large explosion, such as that produced by a nuclear weapon high above the earth, produces rapidly changing electric and magnetic fields. They generate surges in voltage and current inside electronic equipement - burning out microchips and circuitry. A nuclear electromagnetic pulse produces three waves of energy. The first is a very fast-moving, brief and intense electromagnetic field. It is created when gamma radiation from the nulcear explosion knocks electrons out of atoms in the earth's upper atmosphere. These electrons start moving downward and interact with the earth's magnetic field - creating a very large, brief pulse.

The second wave is generated by scattered gamma rays. It is similar to the pulses caused by lightning strikes and as such tends to be less damaging to equipment. The third wave is a very slow pulse, lasting tens to hundreds of seconds, caused by the nuclear detonation driving the earth's magnetic field out of the wave, followed by the field returning to its natural place. It can induce currents in long electrical conductors such as power lines, causing damage to substations and transformers.

The scale of the damage depends on the height of the explosion. A detonation at an altitude of 30 miles is calculated to cause damage for 480 miles around. At an altitude of 300 miles, the damage would radiate to 1470 miles - a field that would cover much of North America or Europe. The strength of the pulse depends on the distance of the explosion from the earth's equator. It is also possible to produce electromagnetic pulses without the use of nuclear weapons. Such devices have been fitted into bombs and missiles, but their range is far more limited because the explosion is far less powerful.

European governments are furiously thinking through the various scenarios, while still urging Athens to stick to its agreements on austerity and reform. If those hopes are dashed and Greece goes, what happens next? Opinion polls showing 80 per cent of Greeks in favour of staying in the euro combine with the election result to offer a scene of confusion.

Greece’s European partners say Athens cannot have it both ways. But the siren call from the radical left coalition Syriza, that Greece is safe in the eurozone with its creditors poised to ease the harsh bailout, is music to the ears of hard-pressed citizens.

Popular anger is running high at the prospect of three more years of austerity while Athens implements the rest of the reform programme agreed with the EU and International Monetary Fund. “We desperately need a break... If my pension is cut again, I might as well commit suicide,” says Angelos Syrigos, 85, whose modest income has been slashed by 30 per cent in the two years since the bailout began.

Middle-aged Greeks are afraid of a eurozone exit, fearing a further collapse in property values, the crumbling of the banking system and high unemployment. “The gravity of the situation isn’t appreciated. Some people believe Syriza will change its tune, others that the Europeans make empty threats,” says Takis Michas, a political commentator. “The only thing that will focus minds is when the money to pay pensions and salaries just doesn’t arrive.”

Tina Brown, who edits the magazine and its sister website The Daily Beast, is known for her love of controversial covers to help boost public interest and sales. The article accompanying the cover was written by the news magazine's regular blogger, Andrew Sullivan, who is an openly gay self-titled conservative political pundit. 'When you step back a little and assess the record of [Mr] Obama on gay rights, you see, in fact, that this was not an aberration. It was an inevitable culmination of three years of work,' Mr Sullivan said in a statement about the article.

He had to discover his black identity and then reconcile it with his white family, just as gays discover their homosexual identity and then have to reconcile it with their heterosexual family,' he wrote, describing the similarities between Mr Obama and the gay community. There was little doubt that Newsweek would be covering the President's historic announcement that he supports same-sex marriage after he had a sit-down television interview confirming what many already believed to be the case. This was, however, the first time that a sitting President had done so, and the magazine asserts that such a move was a calculated one that had been thoroughly planned.

'It’s easy to write off President Obama’s announcement of his support for gay marriage as a political ploy during an election year. But don’t believe the cynics,' representatives from the news magazine told Politico in a statement about the article. President Obama's announcement came several days after Vice President Joe Biden said that he was 'absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and men and women marrying are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties.'

Republicans, the majority of whom are against gay marriage, said that Mr Obama simply made his historic announcement in an effort to gain support among liberal voters in the lead up to the general election. 'While President Obama has played politics on this issue, the Republican Party and our presumptive nominee Mitt Romney have been clear,' Republican national committee chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement. 'We support maintaining marriage between one man and one woman and would oppose any attempts to change that.' Mr Romney re-affirmed his opposition to gay marriage in a speech to graduates of evangelical Liberty University in Virginia last week. He described marriage as an 'enduring institution' and said that it should be 'a relationship between one man and one woman'.