A quote from Thomas Jefferson flashes across the screen in blood-red colours: "We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt." We learn that public debt in the rich economies fell from 124 percent of GDP at the end of Second World War to 29 percent in 1973, a dream era that we have left behind.

The debt burden has since climbed at a compound rate of 2 percent a year, accelerating into an upward spiral to 105 percent of GDP after the Lehman crash. It is as if we had fought another world war. Christine Lagarde, the Fund's managing-director, calls it the "New Mediocre". The painful ritual of her IMF tenure has been to admit at each meeting that the previous forecasts were too hopeful. First it was Europe's debt crisis. Now it is because China, Brazil, Russia, and a host of mini-BRICS have hit the limits of easy catch-up growth.

This year the curse was finally broken. There will be no downgrade. The IMF is crossing its fingers that world growth will still be 3.5 percent for 2015. Yet the Fund's underlying message is that sky-high debt ratios and old-age populations are a dangerous mix, leaving the world prone to the "Japanese" diseases of deflation and atrophy. The monetary and fiscal buffers are largely exhausted. Authorities have little left in their policy arsenal to fight the next downturn, whenever it comes.

Six people have already died from anaphylactic shock after being stung by the insects which originally come from China but have spread across the world. Next month the Department of Environment’s National Bee Unit is to meet in Suffolk for a seminar on how to tackle the predators, which can devour up to 50 honey bees a day.

UK beekeepers have been sent email alerts by Defra asking them to be on the look-out for the menaces. Members of the public are being urged not to approach nests, which are usually found high in trees or on the sides of buildings. Most people die after disturbing a nest and being stung multiple times, which can cause those with allergies to suffer a fatal reaction.

The offer of Russian largesse comes as no surprise. During Alexis Tsipras's trip to Moscow earlier this month, Vladimir Putin hailed the gas project - dubbed "Turkish Stream" - as providing "hundreds of millions of euros of transit taxes a year, just like that,” to the stricken economy. Syriza's firebrand Leftist energy minister has also promised to threaten Europe's "deep economic and geo-strategic interests" in a bid to finally gain some leeway in the country's acrimonious bail-out negotiations. "We still do not know our own strength," said Panagiotis Lafanzis, head of Syriza's Left Platform, who attacked Greece's creditors as "neo-colonial powers".

"Several of the so-called partners and certainly some in the International Monetary Fund want to denigrate and humiliate our government, blackmailing us to implement measures against the working classes," said the uncompromising minister. A potential €5 billion advance would certainly help alleviate the immediate financial pressures on the Leftist government. Every month, Syriza faces a €1.7 billion social security bill, on top of its commitments to payback its lenders. The latest is an €80 million interest bill to the European Central Bank due on Monday. Yet, should Russian money reach Athens' coffers as early as next week, it could help Athens stay afloat until mid-June.

But in the absence of any further bridging funds, Greece could well be scrambling to make ends meet by the end of June, when a combined €2 billion will be due to the Greek people and the IMF.

The Pope underscored that all Christians “must be firm in deploring all forms of anti-Semitism, and in showing their solidarity with the Jewish people.” He also remarked on the recent seventieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the concentration camp “which has come to be synonymous with the great tragedy of the Shoah.” “The memory of what took place there, in the heart of Europe, is a warning to present and future generations,” he said. “Acts of hatred and violence against Christians and the faithful of other religions must likewise be condemned everywhere,” he added.

Pope Francis also proposed that in the face of rampant secularism in Europe and other parts of the world, Jews and Christians have a co-responsibility to keep faith in God alive. Both Jews and Christians, he said, have “the blessing but also the responsibility to help preserve the religious sense of the men and women of today, and that of our society.” European society, he said, is “increasingly marked by secularism and threatened by atheism,” and “we run the risk of living as if God did not exist.”

The Pope appealed for a common Judeo-Christian witness “to the sanctity of God and human life.” God is holy, he said, “and the life He has given is holy and inviolable.” Francis noted that for almost fifty years, “the dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Jewish community has progressed in a systematic way,” which calls for gratitude to the Lord, “rejoicing in our progress and in the friendship which has grown between us,” he said.

Some experts have said that climate change bringing excessive heat can make some areas more susceptible to dust storms, but one European scientist pointed out that the number of dust storms over the decades has always been variable. The footage of the dust storm in Belarus, filmed from a high rise apartment, shows traffic moving along a busy street in the province of Salihorsk, south of the capital of Minsk on Monday afternoon.

As dark clouds move over the city, the entire area is plunged into darkness - forcing motorists to turn on their lights as they navigate the darkened roads. The storm was caused by a cold front moving in from the Ukrainian-Belorusian border, reported RT. Earlier this month Britain was shrouded in a cloud of Saharan dust, known as 'blood rain,' as the temperatures soared. And incredible pictures also taken at the beginning of April showed the moment ferocious red sandstorms devoured a city in China's north west. China's pollution hit cities are now having to cope with a fresh nuisance - the massive sandstorm that struck the north-west of the country being the fourth this year alone.

In December a small town in Queensland, Australia, experienced a dust storm that residents said was unprecedented in magnitude. Clouds of dirt engulfed the town of Bedourie, in Queensland's south-west, bringing with it a thick, dusty night for more than 90 minutes. The Middle East has also experienced several huge sandstorms this year.

This week Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran experienced severe dust storms and last week the Arabian Peninsula was hit by a sandstorm the size of the US. And in February raging sandstorms engulfed Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt causing the worst Israeli air pollution in years and whipping up huge waves in the Mediterranean Sea.

NSW Premier Mike Baird also said that 200,000 homes remain without power as of Tuesday, adding that the storm could get worse in the Hunter and Central Coast regions. The minister for police and emergency services David Elliott described the disaster as “once in a decade storm, the likes of which we haven’t seen since 2007.”

“Today’s events are going to test our emergency services but they are there to be tested. We have seen, as the Premier said, 4,500 responses thus far,” he added.

When the system started to fail back in 2008, global authorities responded by pumping this debt spiral back up and getting it to spin even faster than ever. If you can believe it, the total amount of global debt has risen by $35 trillion since the last crisis. Unfortunately, any system based on debt is going to break down eventually, and there are signs that it is starting to happen once again.

For example, just a few days ago the IMF warned regulators to prepare for a global “liquidity shock“. And on Friday, Chinese authorities announced a ban on certain types of financing for margin trades on over-the-counter stocks, and we learned that preparations are being made behind the scenes in Europe for a Greek debt default and a Greek exit from the eurozone.

On top of everything else, we just witnessed the biggest spike in credit application rejections ever recorded in the United States. All of these are signs that credit conditions are tightening, and once a “liquidity squeeze” begins, it can create a lot of fear.

So what is the bottom line to all of this? The bottom line is that we are starting to see the early phases of a liquidity squeeze. The flow of credit is going to begin to get tighter, and that means that global economic activity is going to slow down. This happened during the last financial crisis, and during this next financial crisis the credit crunch is going to be even worse.

This is why it is so important to have an emergency fund. During this type of crisis, you may have to be the source of your own liquidity. At a time when it seems like nobody has any cash, those that do have some will be way ahead of the game.

The Chancellor said the escalating crisis in Greece is now the biggest threat to the world economy and has become a haunting theme for finance ministers and central bankers meeting at the International Monetary Fund in Washington this week. "The mood is notably more gloomy than at the last international gathering, and it is now clear to me that a misstep or a miscalculation by either side could easily return European economies to the kind of perilous situation we saw three or four years ago," he said.

"The crunch appears to be coming in May, and it would be a mistake to think that the UK would be immune. Of course, [because of the general election taking place] it would be the very worst moment for there to be any confusion about the direction of British economic policy, or for a change of direction. We need resilience for moments like this," he said.

The warnings came as Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis prepared to meet US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew to explore a possible 12th-hour compromise before Greece runs out of funds. Mr Varoufakis spoke privately with President Barack Obama at the White House on Thursday night, pleading with the US leader to step up pressure on Europe's creditors for more flexibility.

Mario Draghi, the ECB's president, said it would be far better for everybody if Greece recovers within EMU but made it clear that the currency bloc is no longer vulnerable to the immediate chain-reaction seen in earlier phases of the debt crisis. This sends an implicit message to the radical-Left Syriza government in Athens that it cannot hope to secure better terms from EMU creditors by threatening to unleash mayhem.

"We have enough instruments at this point of time, the OMT (bond-buying plan), QE, and so on, which though designed for other purposes could certainly be used in a crisis if needed," said Mr Draghi, speaking after a series of tense meetings at the International Monetary Fund. "We are better equipped than we were in 2012, 2011."

In effect, the ECB now has the license to act as a full lender-of-last-resort and mop up the bond markets of Portugal, Spain, or Italy, preventing yields from rising. Yet Syriza appears to be countering such pressure with its own foreign policy gambits as events move with electrifying speed in Athens. Greek sources have told The Telegraph that Syriza may sign a deal with Russia for Gazprom's "Turkish Stream" pipeline project as soon as next week, unlocking as much as €3 billion to €5 billion in advance funding.

A bloody struggle for control of Iraq is taking place on two fronts, each with a starkly different balance of power. Along the Euphrates Valley and across the desert of Anbar province, Isil fighters are still on the march. This is where they launched their new assault on Ramadi, a provincial capital 100 miles west of Baghdad. On the other front, which slices across the Tigris Valley, the terrorists have been forced on to the defensive. A counter-attack by the Baghdad government has expelled Isil from all but a few pockets of Saddam Hussein's home city of Tikrit.

After the recapture of Tikrit, the next target of the Tigris counter-offensive will be Mosul, the biggest city in northern Iraq with a population of about 1.5 million. In February, a spokesman for US Central Command said that America and its allies would train 25,000 Iraqi troops to recapture Mosul as early as May. But that plan now lies in tatters. The counter-attack along the Tigris has also exposed the frailty of Iraq's security forces. Last summer, the national army collapsed in the face of Isil's challenge, with four divisions simply disintegrating. Today, the army remains too weak to mount a counter-offensive without help.

The backbone of the assault that recaptured Tikrit was provided by the Popular Mobilisation Force, a loose coalition of Shia militias and fighters recruited from local Sunni tribes. Of the 24,000 troops that wrested back Tikrit, 20,000 were Shia militiamen, according to US officials. Only 3,000 were from the Iraqi army and the remaining 1,000 were from Sunni tribes.

The Shia militias are, in turn, equipped and largely controlled by neighbouring Iran. General Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, no longer troubles to hide his responsibility for the campaign against Isil. On the contrary, he has been photographed visiting his victorious troops in Tikrit. But the population of this area is overwhelmingly Sunni. Local people may not welcome their "liberation" by Shia militia fighters, especially if reprisals or atrocities follow.

As the war continues, the line between Shia militias and government forces is increasingly blurred. Mohammed al-Ghabban, the new interior minister, is also a member of the Badr Brigade, an Iranian-sponsored armed group. Meanwhile, ordinary civilians are suffering most of all. At least 14,000 people have been killed in the past 12 months, according to the United Nations. Whatever the balance of forces on the two fronts, the latest round of the battle for Iraq has inflicted the bloodiest year the country has endured for almost a decade.

Islamic terrorism is not abating, hampering vital efforts to bring a better life to the people through a revitalized economy and political stability. Sisi knows he has to show results soon to prevent Egypt from slipping back into anarchy and chaos.

Despite the army’s all-out effort to defeat Islamist insurgency in Sinai, there is no end in sight. F-16 fighter planes and Apache helicopters have joined the campaign, security forces have killed or wounded hundreds of terrorists, destroying their haunts and their training groups – but more keep coming. Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis gunmen, who have pledged allegiance to Islamic State, continue making daring raids against police stations and other security targets, leading to loss of life and heavy damage.

The chancellor added that Germany is interested in economic cooperation with Russia, despite the current political differences between the two countries. Political differences should be settled in a diplomatic way, Merkel said. "Step by step we do everything possible to create a common economic area – as Russian President Vladimir Putin once said – from Vladivostok to Lisbon."

In the five years since Greece’s financial woes were revealed to the world, it has been sleepy Finland which has emerged as the most trenchant critic of EU largesse to the indebted Mediterranean. The outcome of the country’s general election could now determine Greece’s future in the monetary union. In a leaked memo seen last month, it was revealed that the Finns had already drawn up contingency plans for a Greek exit from the euro. Although ostensibly a sensible measure for any finance ministry to contemplate, the document confirmed the Finns' position as the most uncompromising of the EU’s creditor nations.

Helsinki was one of the main obstacles to securing a longer extension to Greece's bail-out late last year. The eventual compromise of a three-month, rather than six-month reprieve, has seen the new Leftist regime scramble desperately for cash since February. With the situation in Athens deteriorating by the day, both Finland's prime minister and central bank governor have eschewed high-minded rhetoric about European unity, to insist creditors should be ready to pull the plug on Greece.

Stagnating growth saw the country stripped of its much coveted Triple-A sovereign debt rating last year. The International Monetary Fund now recommends a cocktail of structural reforms and fiscal consolidation that would make officials in Athens bristle. "There is no sympathy for Greece any more, especially because our own economy is struggling," says Jan von Gerich, strategist at Nordea bank in Helsinki. "If there was a referendum on a bail-out deal tomorrow, it would fail." The tale of the Finnish economy proves competitiveness is not merely the plague of southern Europe.

In the wake of the tragedy, Britain faced pressure to end its 'immoral' opposition to rescue operations in the Mediterranean as only 28 passengers were rescued after their overcrowded fishing boat tipped over at night on its way from Libya to Italy. One of the survivors, a man from Bangladesh, said there was 950 migrants on board – including 200 women and up to 50 children – and told prosecutors about 300 migrants were trapped in the ship's hold when it sank.

Politicians and charities have attacked the British government and other EU states for supporting Italy's controversial decision to stop search and rescue operations last year. This tragedy comes just days after another shipwreck in the area claimed 400 lives.

So far, 10,000 migrants have been rescued by the Italian coast guard, navy and merchant vessels this week - an unprecedented number. The influx of migrants, mainly from Africa attempting to cross the sea from Libya, is putting pressure on Italy's shelter system and raising calls for a better response to the emergency.