"The economic situation is worsening from month to month, and unemployment has reached a level that puts democratic structures ever more in doubt," he said. "The Germans have not yet realised that southern Europe, including France, will be forced by their current misery to fight back against German hegemony sooner or later," he said, blaming much of the crisis on Germany's wage squeeze to gain export share.

Mr Lafontaine said on the parliamentary website of Germany's Left Party that Chancellor Angela Merkel will "awake from her self-righteous slumber" once the countries in trouble unite to force a change in crisis policy at Germany's expense. His prediction appeared confirmed as French finance minister Pierre Moscovici yesterday proclaimed the end of austerity and a triumph of French policy, risking further damage to the tattered relations between Paris and Berlin. "Austerity is finished. This is a decisive turn in the history of the EU project since the euro," he told French TV. "We're seeing the end of austerity dogma. It's a victory of the French point of view."

At a Mass he celebrated Sunday in crowded St Peter's Square, Francis said abuse victims are in his prayers. He stressed that all must work with courage so that children, who are among the most vulnerable people, be always defended and protected.

Ignoring sometimes heavy rain, Francis toured the square in a popemobile, but left the vehicle to embrace disabled adults and children along his route. In a surprise, he ventured beyond the Vatican's confines, riding the popemobile down a Rome boulevard to greet thousands of cheering faithful who couldn't fit in the square.

As Syria's two-year-old civil war veered into the potentially atomic arena of Iran's confrontation with Israel and the West over its nuclear program, people were woken in the Syrian capital by explosions that shook the ground like an earthquake and sent pillars of flame high into the night sky. "Night turned into day," one man told Reuters from his home at Hameh, near one of the targets, the Jamraya military base.

The Syrian government accused Israel of effectively helping al Qaeda Islamist "terrorists" and said the strikes "open the door to all possibilities"; but Israeli officials said that, as in January, they were calculating Assad would not pick a fight with a well-armed neighbor while facing defeat at home.

If you take any notice of the British press you will know that the “epicenter” of this British epidemic of epic earthquake proportions – is Swansea in Wales UK. That is where all the fuss is about. There was just ONE laboratory confirmed case out of 183 notified cases – that is 18,200% over-diagnosed – or put another way – 0.005 of notified measles cases were really measles.

For the entire period 1 January to March 31, 2013 for the whole of Wales there were just 26 laboratory confirmed cases out of 446 notifications: 10 in January, 8 in February. And in March just eight cases out of 302 notifications for the whole of Wales.

That is a percentage rate of over-diagnosis and over-notification in March of 3774% or just 0.027 of notified cases were actually measles – and it is medical professionals who do the diagnosing and notifying. Kind of knocks your faith in the ability of doctors to diagnose a basic childhood illness.

The main advances in combating disease over 200 years have been better food and clean drinking water. Improved sanitation, less overcrowded and better living conditions also contribute.

Can “vaccinatable” diseases “return” despite vaccination? Yes. If you are too poorly nourished your body is likely to lack essential nutrients needed to maintain its immune system sufficiently to withstand disease. This will happen regardless of how many vaccinations you have had. This was experienced in Eastern Europe following the collapse of the old Soviet Bloc and the economic chaos which ensued, leaving many in great poverty.

For the same reason vaccines do not “work” and “save” lives in impoverished African and other third world economies. The majority of third world child deaths still occur despite vaccination. These children need proper food, clean water to drink and wash in and sanitation. We give them vaccines instead.

In an announcement intended to show that the government is serious about improving food safety, the Ministry of Public Security said on Thursday that the police had caught a gang of traders in eastern China who bought rat, fox and mink flesh and sold it as mutton. But that and other cases of meat smuggling, faking and adulteration featured in Chinese newspapers and websites on Friday were unlikely to instill confidence in consumers already queasy over many reports about meat, fruit and vegetables laden with disease, toxins, banned dyes and preservatives.

Sixty-three people were arrested and accused of “buying fox, mink and rat and other meat products that had not undergone inspection,” which they doused in gelatin, red pigment and nitrates, and sold as mutton in Shanghai and adjacent Jiangsu Province for about $1.6 million, according to the ministry’s statement. The report, posted on the internet, did not explain how exactly the traders acquired the rats and other creatures.

“How many rats does it take to put together a sheep?” said one typically baffled and angry user of Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblog service that often acts as a forum for public venting. “Is it cheaper to raise rats than sheep?”

But this puts Ms Merkel in a bind, as she has to answer to German voters in September when the country holds parliamentary elections. While the European economy may be deteriorating at an alarming rate, the electorate here is still enamored of her as the Iron Chancellor, advocating the austerity policies that are rapidly falling into disfavor elsewhere, among economists as well as the public.

Her response, in recent months, has been to try a delicate balancing act, quietly easing up on crisis-stricken states, giving them more time to narrow their budget deficits, while showing no outward signs of weakness that her political rivals can pounce upon.

But this stance may become increasingly untenable, if the United States’s more stimulative economic policies begin to bear fruit and Europe continues to struggle, as seems to be the case.

To translate that into plain English, the Fed still thinks that betting against the future of our children to temporarily boost Wall Street for now is a great idea. No surprise there.

Half a world away in the Vatican, Pope Francis in his May Day address told followers in St Peter’s Square “I think about those who are unemployed often because of an economic conception of society that seeks egoistic profit regardless of social justice.” Francis’ statement is a powerful policy insight into what happens to government, business and society alike when a central bank runs amok with the money supply.

Both the Eurozone and the United States are in a state of denial over the destruction of their currencies. The problem with increasing the money supply in the hopes of “stimulating” an economy is that central banks distort everything from the way governments rule their people to how society makes money.

America ought to take a hint from Pope Francis and get its money supply under control. We are not in a recovery; we are in a runaway vortex to national economic annihilation. Inflation is destroying the dollar and erasing our future, all in the name of greed … and a quick buck.