The interesting thing about this latest measles outbreak is that the media is parading it around as evidence that not getting vaccinated triggers disease outbreaks, even though the original source of the disease is unknown. It is entirely possible that a vaccinated person spread the disease to both vaccinated and unvaccinated people, which in and of itself shows the lack of effectiveness of vaccines.

Early on, media reports claimed that "most" of the cases were in unvaccinated people. More recent reports are saying that "some" of the people were unvaccinated.

Greece is not the only economy struggling under the euro, and that's why a new approach is needed, Stiglitz said. "The policies that Europe has foisted on Greece just have not worked and that's true of Spain and other countries." The Columbia University professor is one of 18 prominent economists who co-authored a letter saying that Europe would benefit from giving Greece a fresh start through debt reduction and a further conditional extension in the grace period. But in the letter in the Financial Times last week, they stressed that Greece would also have to carry out reforms.

"Greece made a few mistakes ... but Europe made even bigger mistakes," Stiglitz told CNBC. "The medicine they gave was poisonous. It led the debt to grow up and the economy to go down." "If Greece leaves, I think Greece will actually do better ... There will be a period of adjustment. But Greece will start to grow," he said. "If that happens, you going to see Spain and Portugal - they've been giving us this toxic medicine and there's an alternative course."

He said the real problem is Germany, which has benefited greatly under the euro. "Most economists are saying the best solution for Europe, if it's going to break up, is for Germany to leave. The mark would rise, the German economy would be dampened."

IW is the second German institute in two days to issue a blunt warning to the new Greek premier, Alexis Tsipras, who has vowed to halt debt payments and reverse austerity measures imposed by the EU-IMF Troika. The ZEW research group said on Tuesday that the EU authorities should order an immediate stress test of banks linked to Greece, and drive home the threat that they are willing to let a Greek default run its course rather than cave to pressure. “Europe should clearly signal that it is not susceptible to blackmail,” it said.

Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, said in Brussels that debt forgiveness for Greece is out of the question. “Anybody discussing a haircut just shows they don’t know what they are talking about.” Mr Schäuble said he was sick of having to justify his rescue strategy. “We have given exceptional help to Greece. I must say emphatically that German taxpayers have handed over a great deal,” he said.

In a clear warning, he said the eurozone is now strong enough to withstand a major shock. “In contrast to 2010, the financial markets have faith in the eurozone. We face no risk of contagion, so nobody should think we can be put under pressure easily. We are relaxed,” he said.

Greece must repay €3.4 billion to the International Monetary Fund in February and March. Tax revenues have collapsed as Greeks preempt what they hope will be a repeal of austerity taxes. “There is only €1.9 billion left in the cash kitty, and the government has spending costs of $2.5 billion coming up. Somebody needs to lend the country money soon,” said Megan Greene, from Manulife Asset Management.

The Greek media reports that capital flight last week reached €10 billion as it became the clear that the amalgam of Maoists, ex-Leninists and radical socialists known as Syriza would win the election. Barclays estimates the outflow at €20 billion since early December, roughly 12 percent of GDP. The European Central Bank is for now stepping into the breach. Liquidity support for Greek banks spiked to €54 billion at the end of December, and is rising fast. If the ECB were to pull the plug, Greece would spiral into a systemic crisis immediately.

Yet that could in theory happen as soon February 28 when the temporary extension on Greece’s bail-out package expires. The final drama will occur in July and August when Greece has to repay €7 billion to the ECB. “It is absolutely certain that we can’t agree to any debt relief involving Greek bonds held by the ECB. That is legally impossible,” said Benoît Cœuré, an ECB board member.

Mr Tsipras’s decision to form a coalition with the right-wing ANEL, or Independent Greeks party - rather than the centrist Potami party - strongly suggests that he intends to force a showdown with the Troika. ANEL is a nationalist champion of the Greek Orthodox Church, opposed to immigration.

Wednesday saw a third consecutive day of double digit gains, with the index falling as much as 20 percent. National Bank of Greece, Piraeus, Alpha Bank and Eurobank all slumped, with up to €7.7 billion wiped off their combined market values since the election. Syriza’s Alexis Tsipras, who was sworn in as prime minister on Monday, on Tuesday appointed the economist Yanis Varoufakis, a fellow fierce opponent of European-imposed austerity, as Greece’s finance minister.

The move was seen as a further sign that Greece is on a collision course with the EU over repaying debt and maintaining its bail-out programme, which currently expires on February 28. Mr Varoufakis, who studied at the University of Essex, has described Greece’s austerity agreements as “fiscal waterboarding”. The bank sell-off pulled the Athens Stock Exchange down 6.4 percent on Wednesday amid further warnings that Syriza and its coalition partners, the right-wing Independent Greek party, will struggle to come to an agreement with the Troika of the ECB, International Monetary Fund and European Union.

There are, however, three problems.

The first is that it relies on the Greek government persuading its electorate that the debts have been reduced while all the other eurozone countries are simultaneously persuading their populations that they haven’t been. Expect arcane formulae and opaque language.

The second is that this isn’t a new trick. The interest rates paid by Greece on most of its debts have already been cut or suspended and the average loan period can be measured in decades rather than years. Just how low can interest rates get squeezed and how long can loan periods be extended before eurozone taxpayers realise that never-never means never?

The last is that Tsipras announced in his speech that he wants Greek debts halved. That amounts to around €160 billion of loans being written off. Amending and extending Greece’s debts will help finesse things a bit. But not that much. Perhaps the gap between expectations in Brussels and Athens really is irreconcilable.

Speaking at a conference in the kingdom, Khalid al-Falih, chief executive of Saudi Aramco - the country's state-run oil company - said: “Supply and demand and the rules of economics will govern. It will take time for the current glut to be removed.” He added that the kingdom was now pumping 9.8m bpd of oil, around 300,000 barrels more than its output measured by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec).

The kingdom has been the main catalyst within the cartel for pursuing a policy of allowing oil prices to fall in order to take back market share from producers outside Opec such as the US and Russia. In November, largely at Saudi Arabia's insistance, Opec members agreed to leave output unchanged at 30 million bpd, triggering a dramatic slump in the price of oil. Brent crude has fallen 60 percent since June and was trading at around $48 per barrel on Tuesday.

Nor, it seems, will those rockets be the end of the story. They were a response that could be carried out relatively quickly and easily, but we ought to presume that Hezbollah and Iran are also planning a more ambitious retaliation, which will take longer to prepare. Meanwhile, they’re maintaining the Golan Heights as an unstable, active front. The fact that the Mount Hermon ski resort was evacuated after Tuesday’s rocket attack was an ancillary benefit from their standpoint. They understand quite well that a single rocket every few days would be enough to paralyze the ski season.

Israel’s response was measured: a few artillery shells fired at the Syrian position from which the rockets were launched. This signaled to Hezbollah and Iran that Israel has a clear policy. A mass-casualty attack, or the opening of a new front, will elicit a severe response. But if its enemies don’t demonstratively cross its red lines, Israel will do everything it can to contain the escalation and prevent a war.

The concept of a tripwire, McCain explained, is the positioning of American and NATO troops in countries sharing a border with Russia, in order to deter a Russian invasion, a scenario some leaders in the United States and NATO anticipate. Such a tripwire would involve a greater military presence than has been designated under NATO’s Readiness Action Plan, a program implemented in 2014 which increases troop rotations and readiness in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, McCain said.

McCain also agreed with statements delivered by former National Security Advisor for the Jimmy Carter administration, Zbigniew Brzezinski who said that if Russia were to make a military incursion into a NATO state it would indicate "the end of NATO.” Under the NATO charter, the 26 member alliance is bound to a collective defense doctrine, stipulating that an attack against one or more of the partner states will be considered an attack on all.

“Everyone knows this is going on,” said one US Embassy official, speaking privately. It is almost impossible to determine how much the insurgents are spending, making it difficult to pinpoint the sources of the funds. The manager of an Afghan firm with lucrative construction contracts with the US government builds in a minimum of 20 percent for the Taliban in his cost estimates. The manager, who will not speak openly, has told friends privately that he makes in the neighborhood of $1 million per month.

Out of this, $200,000 is siphoned off for the insurgents. If negotiations fall through, the project will come to harm — road workers may be attacked or killed, bridges may be blown up, engineers may be assassinated. The degree of cooperation and coordination between the Taliban and aid workers is surprising, and would most likely make funders extremely uncomfortable.

One Afghan contractor, speaking privately, told friends of one project he was overseeing in the volatile south. The province cannot be mentioned, nor the particular project. “I was building a bridge,” he said, one evening over drinks. “The local Taliban commander called and said ‘don’t build a bridge there, we’ll have to blow it up.’ I asked him to let me finish the bridge, collect the money — then they could blow it up whenever they wanted. We agreed, and I completed my project.”

The Jewish Home party has declared the “Temple Mount” as the most sacred site for Jews throughout the world, while the newly formed Kulanu leader, Moshe Kahlon, has stated that “Our party supports the absolute unity of Jerusalem in any future political framework agreement.” The Old City in Jerusalem will be under Israeli sovereignty. The “leftist” Zionist party Meretz has also come out in support of the right of Jews to pray in the Temple Mount.

The Commission urged the international community, and in particular the Arab states, to act in order to halt Israel's gross violations of Palestinian rights, adding that the failure to take action serves to perpetuate the Israeli authorities' violation of the sanctity of al Aqsa.

The Fed also chose to reiterate that it would remain "patient" in normalising monetary policy and raising rates from their historic lows of 0.25 percent. Collapsing oil prices and weak inflation meant investors has been expecting a hike to be pushed towards the latter end of the year.

But the Fed's bullish outlook on the economy now signal any interest rate rise could "occur sooner than currently anticipated", according to Sebastien Galy at Societe Generale.

That includes actual Nazis, crypto-Nazis, actual Communists, and former Communists like Syriza, who won power, though not an outright majority, with an unexpectedly strong 36 percent of the vote. It turns out that keeping a country in a 1930s-style depression creates 1930s-style politics.

Europe isn't panicking, though, because things are going according to plan. Or at least close enough. Any economist could have told them, and plenty of them did, that something like this was bound to happen if countries share monetary, but not fiscal, policy. That's because, at some point, one country will need hard and another one will need loose money. And whichever one loses out will spiral out of control if there aren't fiscal transfers to slow them down or speed them up. But the common currency doesn't have these kind of shock absorbers. That means the euro not only pushes countries into, but also keeps them stuck in depressions.

The irony, of course, is that the euro was supposed to be a paper monument to peace and prosperity that brought people together. But, for now at least, it's made prosperity impossible and driven them apart instead, reviving old prejudices, stirring new ones, and making people more, not less, nationalistic.

So much for a United States of Europe.

Today, euroscepticism and nationalism are on the rise. Anti-Europe parties thrive on the continent’s chronic economic malaise. Over 25 million Europeans are now out of work, with youth unemployment nearing 25 per cent, particularly in the southern countries. Many migrate internally, seeking opportunity but stirring resentment among locals. Populist politicians capitalise. Nigel Farage talks of immigration making parts of England “unrecognisable’’, an approach adopted by Morten Messerschmidt in Denmark and Marine Le Pen in France where anti-semitism is also rampant.

Compounding its problems is what many see as “the creeping Islamisation of Europe’’. For a half-century, coinciding with reduced European birthrates and increased ageing populations, millions of migrants arrived from North and sub-Saharan Africa. Today there are 20 million Muslims in Europe. The January 7 Paris attacks were carried out by French Muslims descended from North and West African immigrants. Home-grown terrorism was also responsible for the 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people as well as the 2005 London suicide bombings that killed 52 and wounded over 700. Additionally, thousands of Europe-bred Muslims leave to join the Islamic State and other jihadist groups, returning radicalised to Europe.

It has all added issues of religious tolerance and national identity to Europe’s problems. Many now reaffirm Europe’s Judeo/Christian culture and a chasm grows between the continent’s native populations and its immigrant communities. Doubt increases regarding the multicultural approach to immigration which does not demand migrants integrate by learning the language and customs of their new country, and preference grows for assimilation as the debate rages. A cohesive Europe is indispensable for global stability. Collectively, the EU is the largest economy on earth. But the continent never achieved commensurate global influence and civilisation is the worse for it. Europe and its values are critical in a world disordered by extremism, cultural decline and income inequalities.

Its problem is that it never achieved political union. But as I noted previously, it is extremely difficult for a United States of Europe to take root. These are old countries, strongly similar, but each with strong history and culture, making coherence difficult. Now, new president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, wants a “stronger Europe” in the world. To get there, Europe must not only overcome its socio-economic problems, but strengthen its integration processes. This must be supported by visionary leadership particularly from France, Germany and the United Kingdom. The continent must develop its vast political potential to deal with its internal problems and play its part for a better, safer world. Europe must calm its inner turmoil.