Italy's president asked former European Commissioner Mario Monti on Sunday to form a government to restore market confidence in an economy whose debt burden is too big for the euro bloc to bail out. Investors will pass initial judgement on his leadership when Italy's Treasury asks investors on Monday to bid for up to 3 billion euros (2.5 billion pounds) in five-year government bonds. At an auction last week, the government's borrowing costs surged above 6 percent and kept rising to levels well beyond what the country could afford to pay over the longer term.

While Italy's problems and the long-drawn-out departure of the flamboyant Berlusconi have pushed the collapse of the much smaller Greek economy backstage, the IMF and European leaders will keep Greece's new prime minister, Lucas Papademos, under pressure to implement radical reform aimed at staving off bankruptcy.

Papademos succeeds George Papandreou, whose proposal to hold a referendum on the country's bailout terms prompted EU leaders to raise the threat of a Greek exit from the currency bloc. The new Greek leader - a former central banker who oversaw his country's entry to the euro zone in 2002 - must win a Wednesday confidence vote in his cabinet before meeting euro zone finance ministers in Brussels on Thursday, state television reported, where he will be expected to outline next year's draft budget before putting it to parliament.

He urged President Assad to launch dialogue with the opposition to effect an orderly transition. Arab leaders have increasingly criticised the crackdown in Syria after months of violence. Both the Saudi and Qatari ambassadors left Damascus in protest at the repression. The Arab League voted on Saturday to suspend Syria's membership. However King Abdullah went further than other Arab leaders in his exclusive interview with BBC World News television.

King Abdullah's remarks, coupled with the Arab League's decision to suspend Damascus, mark a turning point in the Arab world's approach to Syria. But Jordan's monarch was emphatic that President Assad stepping down was not enough. His call to the Syrian leader was about changing a "system". He admitted that no-one was clear how to do that, and the Syrian regime still believed it was "in a fairly comfortable position".

King Abdullah, like many others, also emphasised there was great concern about "life after Bashar". He warned that any outside intervention in Syria would open "Pandora's box".

The US leader was rebuffed last month when he demanded private guarantees that no strike would go ahead without White House notification, suggesting Israel no longer plans to "seek Washington's permission", sources said. The disclosure, made by insiders briefed on a top-secret meeting between America's most senior defence chief and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's hawkish prime minister, comes amid concerns that Iran's continuing progress towards nuclear weapons capability means the Jewish state has all but lost hope for a diplomatic solution.

On Tuesday, UN weapons inspectors released their most damning report to date into Iran's nuclear activities, saying for the first time that the Islamic republic appeared to be building a nuclear weapon. It was with that grave possiblity in mind that Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, flew into Israel last month on what was ostensibly a routine trip.

Officially, his brief was restricted to the Middle East peace process, but the most important part of his mission was a private meeting with Mr Netanyahu and the defence minister, Ehud Barak. Once all but a handful of trusted staff had left the room, Mr Panetta conveyed an urgent message from Barack Obama. The president, Mr Panetta said, wanted an unshakable guarantee that Israel would not carry out a unilateral military strike against Iran's nuclear installations without first seeking Washington's clearance.

The two Israelis were notably evasive in their response, according to sources both in Israel and the United States. "They did not suggest that military action was being planned or was imminent, but neither did they give any assurances that Israel would first seek Washington's permission, or even inform the White House in advance that a mission was underway," one said. Speculation about an imminent Israeli military action has been a regular occurrence over the years, but rarely as fevered as now. Last week, a British official even suggested that an attack could come before Christmas.

In Mr Netanyahu's eyes, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another "Hitler" whose aim is to complete what the Holocaust failed to do by wiping out the Jewish race. "People outside Israel don't understand how profound memories of the Holocaust are, and how they affect future policy making," said Mr Bergman, the military analyst. "At the end of the day, this policy of 'never again' would dictate Israel's behaviour when intelligence comes through that Iran has come close to a bomb."

EU sources told Reuters that officials of France and Germany, since the 1950s the driving forces of European integration, had held discussions on a two-speed Europe with a smaller, more tightly integrated euro zone and a looser outer circle.

Estimates of how likely the currency bloc is to break up, how damaging it might be and what might remain afterwards vary wildly. But with European leaders still struggling to find a credible response to the crisis, the prospect of one or more countries leaving - and effectively defaulting on their sovereign debt as they do so - is seen rising by the day.

Suddenly, pundits, policymakers and other observers find themselves questioning one of their most fundamental assumptions - that an increasingly united Europe would be a key player in a newly multipolar world. "You already have one of the great pillars of globalization, the United States, entering a period of difficulty and looking inward," said Thomas Barnett, US-based chief strategist of political risk consultancy Wikistrat - which is being asked by several private clients to urgently model scenarios. "Now one of the other pillars, Europe, looks about to implode."

That, he said, could leave the continent's powers - who only a handful of years ago made up much of the G7 group of largest economies - increasingly sidelined as China, India, Brazil and others rose. At the very least, analysts say, the world may have to get used to a Europe that has lost much of its confidence and has much less appetite for international engagement.

For some, any unraveling of the euro zone - whether or not it brings with it a collapse of the wider EU - would be seen as yet another sign of much faster than expected western decline. "For India, China and many of the other new powers, they don't see simply a crisis of the euro zone," said Kleine-Brokhoff at the George Marshall Foundation of the United States. "They see a crisis of the rich world and it makes them even more confident that their time has come."

But that interpretation, some analysts say, could prove an illusion. "No one would be laughing - I don't think there would be any winners at all," said Michael Denison, a former senior adviser to ex-British Foreign Secretary David Miliband and now research director for consultancy Control Risks. "You'd have a banking and sovereign debt crisis that would hurt everyone."

The glut of homes on the market would then see supply outstrip demand, causing prices to crash. Brussels bureaucrats want to bring the UK's crucial buy-to-let sector into line with Continental practice. That would mean landlords could no longer get a buy-to-let mortgage based on rental income.

Instead they would have to rely solely on their personal income. There are about 1.5 million buy-to-let mortgages in the UK. Many landlords use second properties to back up their pension. A Ukip spokesman said last night: "It is outrageous that the EU should try to dictate to lenders and borrowers the basis on which loans should be enacted. This unwarranted assault on the buy-to-let market will inevitably result in less affordable rental housing. It will put the lives of 1.5 million British investors and their tenants into turmoil."

Some argued that "that was then and this is now," and that the Commission's influence had waned with the passing of the older generation. Nonsense! It was Trilateral Commissioner Vallery d'Estaing who authored the EU's Constitution in 2002-2003 when he was President of the Convention on the Future of Europe. On November 10, 2011, Robert Wenzel, Editor & Publisher of the Economic Policy Journal, wrote the following short report:

"Here's what you need to know about the current crisis in the Eurozone. The big time banksters are getting direct hands on control:

"Mario Drgahi has become president of the European Central Bank as of November 1. He was vice chairman and managing director of Goldman Sachs International and a member of the firm-wide management committee. He was the Italian Executive Director at the World Bank. He has been a Fellow of the Institute of Politics at the John F Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

"Lucas Papademos takes over today as Prime Minister of Greece. He was an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. He was a visiting professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. And, he was previously a vice president of the European Central Bank. He has been a member of the Trilateral Commission since 1998.

"Indications are that Mario Monti will succeed Silvio Berlusconi as prime minister of Italy, within days. Monti completed graduate studies at Yale University, where he studied under James Tobin (see the Tobin Tax). He is a member of the European Commission. He is European Chairman of the Trilateral Commission and member of the Bilderberg Group.

"If you get the sense that the elitist banksters are going to take this financial crisis and push it in whatever direction they want, you are probably very right."

In their shadow, plumbers, electricians and truck drivers, sometimes numbering in the thousands, go dutifully about their work, all clad from head to toe in white hazmat suits. Their job - cleaning up the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl - will take decades to complete.

Reporters, also in radiation suits, visited the ravaged facility Saturday for the first time since Japan's worst tsunami in centuries swamped the plant March 11, causing reactor explosions and meltdowns and turning hundreds of square miles (kilometers) of countryside into a no man's land.

Eight months later, the plant remains a shambles. Mangled trucks, flipped over by the power of the wave, still clutter its access roads. Rubble remains strewn where it fell. Pools of water cover parts of the once immaculate campus. Tens of thousands of the plant's former neighbors may never be able to go home. And just as Hiroshima and Nagasaki become icons of the horrors of nuclear weapons, Fukushima has become the new rallying cry of the global anti-nuclear energy movement.

Currently, 43 of Japan's 54 nuclear reactors are shut down, either because of mechanical problems or routine inspections, which must be conducted every 13 months. Local approval is required to restart nuclear power plants, even after routine inspections, and local leaders fearing repercussions at the polls have been loath to provide it.

TEPCO announced two weeks ago there will be enough power to see the country through the winter, but after that, the effect of the nuclear crisis on electricity production could become even more acute. If political resistance remains as high as it is now, every nuclear reactor in Japan could be offline by May.

The remarks by Dagong's chairman, Guan Jianzhong, to be broadcast in an interview with al-Jazeera on Saturday morning, come at the end of another week of deep turmoil for the world economy. Dagong, which has maintained a pessimistic outlook on US fiscal policy, has been leading the charge to downgrade US debt over the last 12 months, lowering the US rating from AA to A+ a year ago.

In August it downgraded US debt again, to A. Days later, Standard & Poor's followed in its wake, becoming the first western agency to downgrade US debt after the threat of a default was narrowly avoided following weeks of political squabbling in Washington over whether President Obama should be allowed to raise the US debt ceiling.

Guan's intervention comes as another embarrassing political standoff over budget policy looms in Washington. The cross-party "supercommittee" given the job of finding ways to cut the budget deficit is reportedly deadlocked, with Republicans refusing to countenance the tax rises being suggested by Democrats. The committee is due to report by 23 November, but there are fears they could fail to reach agreement, prompting a new crisis.

Founded in 1994 by the Chinese government and the People's Bank of China, Dagong is the only credit ratings agency in China that grades foreign sovereign debt and bonds. In an interview with Talk to Al-Jazeera, Guan agrees that it is almost inevitable that his agency will cut America's debt rating once again, arguing that the only solution open to the US economy is further quantitative easing.

The dramatic reduction in export activity is not the only sign of a slowdown in the once fearsome dragon economy. Experts warn China is incubating both a banking crisis and a massive property crash. China's Communist leaders, eyeing a bailout of the euro, may instead have to spend much of their US$3.2trillion foreign reserves solving problems at home. Japanese investment bank, Nomura, forecasts a one in three chance that China GDP growth, or national output, will drop to under five per cent in the next three years.

It describes this as a "hard landing" for an economy currently enjoying healthy growth of nine per cent. Like Europe, China is groaning under a huge pile of debt. It has been growing fast because the majority of its GDP comes from investment in fixed assets such as spending on new rail lines and infrastructure. Nomura reckons China's over investment and excess credit has stored up deep financial problems for the future. The nation's debt-to-GDP ratio could be as high as 1.8 times, the bank said. That is the same ratio as Greece's.

The Communist Party dodged the global recession resulting from the credit crunch by unleashing a huge flood of credit into the system. Between 2009-10 the nation's banks doled out a record 17.5 trillion yuan (1.7 trillion pounds) of new loans. By mid 2009, Beijing was in the midst of a construction boom that was replicated across China. Yet central and provincial government departments that borrowed the cash for make-work projects forgot all about the principle of supply and demand.

China is now littered with questionable monuments to the state-engineered credit boom. A high speed railway costing 200 billion pounds is losing 10 million pounds a day. In July, one of the bullet trains crashed into another, killing 39 passengers. The nation's banks are beginning to count the cost of the construction splurge. Investment bank, Credit Suisse, estimates up to 60 per cent of Chinese banks' capital could be wiped out by bad debt. If banks were forced to disclose the true extent of the holes in their balance sheets the result could be a catastrophic loss of confidence in the Asian giant's financial system.

The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) last week announced it had successfully sold a 3 billion euros 10-year bond in support of Ireland. However, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal that target was only met after the EFSF resorted to buying up several hundred million euros worth of the bonds.

Sources said the EFSF had spent more than 100 million euros buying up its own bonds to help it achieve its funding target after the banks leading the deal were only able to find about 2.7 billion euros of outside demand for the debt. The revelation will be seen as a major failure and a worrying sign of future buyers strike after EFSF officials and their bankers had spent recent weeks travelling the world attempting to persuade key investors, including China's national wealth fund and Japanese government funds, to buy its bonds.

Chinese and Japanese money was crucial to last year's first bond sales by the EFSF, but they have since been dismayed by the eurozone's failure to resolve the worsening debt crisis and alarmed at how fund has morphed from being a rescue facility for European banks into a potentially 1 trillion euros leveraged first-loss insurer for eurozone governments. Other European Union funds are also understood to have supported the EFSF's bond sale. The failure of the EFSF will increase pressure on the European Central Bank to effectively become the lender of last resort for the eurozone, a move it has strongly resisted.

The European elite have no intention on giving up on a united Europe. Rather, they hope to be able to bring to life a new "United States of Europe" out of the ashes of the existing eurozone. Over the coming months we will see widespread panic and fear all across Europe. The euro will likely sink like a rock and there will probably be huge financial problems in Europe and all around the globe. But for the European elite, a great crisis like this represents a golden opportunity to tear down the existing structures and build new ones. The solution that the European elite will be pushing will not be to go back to the way that Europe used to be. Instead, they will be pushing the idea of a much more tightly integrated Europe really hard.

Of course it will not be called "the United States of Europe", but that is definitely what they have in mind. But they know that the people of Europe will never go for this solution unless they feel enough fear and pain first. Right now, the stage is being set for the coming financial crisis in Europe. All over the EU, media outlets are priming Europeans to expect the worst. For example, the following comes from an article in the Telegraph:

"The collapse of the eurozone would cause a crash that would instantly wipe out half of the value of Europe's economy, plunging the continent into a depression as deep as the 1930s slump, the president of the European Commission has warned. PREPARATIONS were under way last night for the break-up of the euro as Europe's debt crisis spiralled out of control. As Treasury officials worked through the night to soften the impact on Britain, David Cameron warned that the single European currency was facing its "moment of truth". Business Secretary Vince Cable went further and spoke about "Armageddon" while Brussels officials warned that the chaos threatened to plunge us all into a new recession."

If you can believe it, many among the European elite may actually be looking forward to the collapse of the current eurozone structure. Why? Well, it will give them the opportunity to implement something new. A financial crisis is only temporary, but many among the European elite believe that they can build a "new Europe" which will last for ages.

Right now, the people of Europe are not ready to go along with the whole "new Europe" thing. So that means that there is going to have to be a lot of chaos, pain and fear first. A financial collapse is most definitely coming to Europe.

It is going to be tremendously unpleasant. But after it is over, the European elite are hoping that they will finally have what they have always wanted - a "new Europe" that is more tightly integrated than it has been at any point since the fall of the Roman Empire.

According to more than a few observers, Gadhafi's plan to quit selling Libyan oil in US dollars - demanding payment instead in gold-backed "dinars" (a single African currency made from gold) - was the real cause. The regime, sitting on massive amounts of gold, estimated at close to 150 tons, was also pushing other African and Middle Eastern governments to follow suit.

And it literally had the potential to bring down the dollar and the world monetary system by extension, according to analysts. French President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly went so far as to call Libya a "threat" to the financial security of the world. The "Insiders" were apparently panicking over Gadhafi's plan.

"Any move such as that would certainly not be welcomed by the power elite today, who are responsible for controlling the world's central banks," noted financial analyst Anthony Wile, editor of the free market-oriented Daily Bell, in an interview with RT. "So yes, that would certainly be something that would cause his immediate dismissal and the need for other reasons to be brought forward [for] removing him from power."

According to Wile, Gadhafi's plan would have strengthened the whole continent of Africa in the eyes of economists backing sound money - not to mention investors. But it would have been especially devastating for the US economy, the American dollar, and particularly the elite in charge of the system.

- Report warns the UK could slip into negative growth over next six months

- PM says the Treasury is planning for all eventualities

- France and Spain could be next to face contagion as Italy borrows another 2 billion pounds in order to stave off bankruptcy

- UK growth expected to slow to 0.7% by end of this year and 0.6% in 2012

- In the eurozone, growth is expected to be 0.5% next year

David Cameron said the Treasury was planning for 'all eventualities' and warned eurozone leaders they have to act now or face a 'moment of truth' that will leave the world in a worse position than the 2008 credit crunch. With fears that the euro could collapse altogether, Business Secretary Vince Cable said that such an outcome would unleash an 'Armageddon scenario' that would drag British banks down as well.

With Italy forced to borrow 2 billion pounds more yesterday to stave off bankruptcy, fears were growing last night that France and Spain will be the next to face contagion from the debt crisis as the interest they have to pay on their debts crept inexorably upwards. The burgeoning crisis spread yesterday when the EU admitted that the debt disaster is now obliterating the prospects of healthy economic growth in Europe.

Officials in Brussels painted a grim picture of the UK's economic prospects for the next two years, warning 'contraction in GDP in at least one of the next few quarters cannot be ruled out' - code for a double dip recession. Meanwhile, the contagion continued to spread. The price Spain pays to borrow - known as its bond yield - is already worryingly high at 5.85 per cent, while storm clouds are starting to gather around France. The interest rate on French debt reached 3.4 per cent compared to Britain's 2.2 per cent and Germany's 1.75 per cent.

The proposal would see a formal "union within a union" created, but would lead to a significant deterioration in Britain's influence in Europe. David Cameron is drawing up urgent plans to stop Britain being "railroaded" into agreeing to decisions taken by the new eurozone bloc.

France and Germany are understood to want to strengthen the union between eurozone countries with new taxes and legal measures to stop nations borrowing and spending too much in future. Weaker countries such as Greece could even be barred from the new eurozone, under radical suggestions from some of those involved in discussions over the plan. It comes amid growing concerns that France could be the next nation to become embroiled in the single currency crisis.

Gordon Brown, the former prime minister, said France was "in danger of being picked off by the markets in the coming weeks and months". Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, has warned Mr Cameron that unless he accepts unconditional changes to the Lisbon Treaty a split will take place, leaving Britain isolated and in a voting minority within the EU.

China had offered help in return for European support to grant it either more influence at the International Monetary Fund, market economy status in the World Trade Organisation, or the lifting of a European arms embargo, said the sources, both of whom have direct knowledge of the matter, including one who has ties to the leadership in Beijing.

The IMF route would have been the simplest diplomatically, especially after European Union leaders last month laid out a plan to leverage up the resources of its crisis-fighting fund through an IMF-backed investment vehicle. But the sources in Beijing say that this option was abruptly closed to China when it became clear to EU politicians that any investment from China would be contingent on gaining a greater say in IMF decision-making and a more rapid path to inclusion of China's yuan in the IMF's special drawing rights (SDR) currency unit.

Increasing China's say at the IMF would mean reducing EU representation and possibly diluting the influence of the US, which enjoys veto-power status given its voting rights at the Fund. "We are willing to help, but we are not a charity," the source with leadership ties told Reuters, requesting anonymity due to political sensitivities.