A leaked internal briefing from Angela Merkel's coalition partners refers to President Francois Hollande as "meandering" and draws attention to France's "highly regulated labour market and highly developed social security system". Details of the briefing note were published alongside an internal assessment from the German economics ministry, which listed the French economy's failings.

The ministry's paper said: "French industry is increasingly losing its competitiveness. The relocation of companies abroad continues. Profitability is meagre." Relations between France and Germany are chilly after Mr Hollande's Socialist party accused Mrs Merkel of "egotistical intransigence" and called for "democratic confrontation" with Berlin.

The French Socialists' attack on the German chancellor, which was toned down after a draft was leaked to the press, brought accusations from the French centre-right that Mr Hollande's party had been gripped by Germanophobia.

Bank balance sheets groaning under the weight of too many bad loans are not the preserve of Europe’s periphery – no matter how much the continued focus on Spain and previously Ireland might suggest this. In mid-October Spain’s economy ministry announced a €90 billion limit on the size of the bad bank that the country is to establish to deal with the fallout from its soured real estate boom (a total of €180 billion in bad real estate assets sits on the balance sheets of Spain’s banks).

Contrast the situation with that of the country that is pivotal to Spain’s fiscal fortunes – Germany. In Germany €273 billion of assets have already been transferred to bad banks from just two lenders: WestLB and Hypo Real Estate. And there could be much more to come.

Even as banks elsewhere in the region come under growing pressure to shrink their balance sheets those in Germany show little sign of addressing the problem, short of transferring billions of euros worth of assets into state-owned bad banks. It is of little surprise that the country is so reluctant to see any pan-European bank regulator gain supervision over any other than its largest banks.

“Germany’s banking system isn’t in great shape and it doesn’t also want the burden of supporting other countries’ banks,” one banker told Euromoney last month. “It has a network of co-operative and savings banks that sustain each other through a complex system of cross-guarantees and there is limited appetite to surrender supervision of this or to insure the deposits of other national banking systems.”

In the game of Italian prime ministers: the Trilateral Commission’s European Chairman Mario Monti is out; and Trilateral Commission Member Enrico Letta is in. Long live the Trilateral Commission! It seems that there is just nothing any country in the West can do to free itself from the shackles of the Global Power Masters and their Megabankers.

No matter what elections are held; no matter what mass demonstrations bring citizens on to the streets; no matter how many signs are shown on millions of TV screens accusing the Megabankers of being the worst crooks, the truth is there for all to see: the Global Power Masters have taken over governments in country after country, enslaving all nations to their Megabankers.

The mainstream media broadcast it; the alternative media point out the sheer inhumanity of it all, even in the European Union where double-digit unemployment is rampant, banks are fraudulently ‘bailed-in’ by stealing account holders’ money, and millions of workers’ houses are foreclosed on. There just does not seem to be anything anybody anywhere can do about it.

This is not a ‘conspiracy theory’ or any such rubbish. This is something that’s right before our eyes. All you need to do is look in the right places, see who are running this ‘greatest show on Earth’, and then think with your own commonsense mind instead of letting CNN or Rupert Murdoch do the ‘thinking’ for you.

Amateur and professional illustrators and photographers alike will find themselves ensnared by the changes, the result of lobbying by Silicon Valley and radical bureaucrats and academics. The changes are enacted in the sprawling Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act which received Royal Assent last week, and it marks a huge shift in power away from citizens and towards large US corporations.

How so? Previously, and in most of the world today, ownership of your creation is automatic, and legally considered to be an individual's property. That's enshrined in the Berne Convention and other international treaties, where it's considered to be a basic human right. What this means in practice is that you can go after somebody who exploits it without your permission - even if pursuing them is cumbersome and expensive.

UK coalition government's new law reverses this human right. When last year Instagram attempted to do something similar, it met a furious backlash. But the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act has sailed through without most amateurs or semi-professionals even realising the consequences.

Despite fierce lobbying by the chemicals industry and opposition by countries including Britain, 15 of the 27 member states voted for a two-year restriction on neonicotinoid insecticides. That gave the European Commission the support it needed to push through an EU-wide ban on using three neonicotinoids on crops attractive to bees.

Tonio Borg, the EC's top health official, said they planned to implement the landmark ban from December. "I pledge to do my utmost to ensure that our bees, which are so vital to our ecosystem and contribute over €22 billion annually to European agriculture, are protected," he said.

The culprit behind this silent killer is lead. And vinyl. And formaldehyde. And asbestos. And Bisphenol A. And polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). And thousands more innovations brought to us by the industries that once promised “better living through chemistry,” but instead produced a toxic stew that has made every American a guinea pig and has turned the United States into one grand unnatural experiment.

Today, we are all unwitting subjects in the largest set of drug trials ever. Without our knowledge or consent, we are testing thousands of suspected toxic chemicals and compounds, as well as new substances whose safety is largely unproven and whose effects on human beings are all but unknown. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) itself has begun monitoring our bodies for 151 potentially dangerous chemicals, detailing the variety of pollutants we store in our bones, muscle, blood, and fat.

None of the companies introducing these new chemicals has even bothered to tell us we’re part of their experiment. None of them has asked us to sign consent forms or explained that they have little idea what the long-term side effects of the chemicals they’ve put in our environment — and so our bodies — could be. Nor do they have any clue as to what the synergistic effects of combining so many novel chemicals inside a human body in unknown quantities might produce.

The so-called 'bail-in' forces savers to foot the bill for the recapitalisation of Cyprus' biggest bank, after it was hit by massive losses from its exposure to debt-crippled Greece. Bank of Cyprus said it had converted 37.5 percent of deposits exceeding €100,000 into "class A" shares, with an additional 22.5 percent held as a buffer for possible conversion in the future.

Another 30 percent would be temporarily frozen and held as deposits, the bank said.

The bail-in is part of attempts by Cyprus to find €13 billion - a figure nearly double the island's original bill - to shore up its economy. Other measures include a possible sell-off of the nation's gold reserves. The European Union and the International Monetary Fund are providing a further €10 billion to the island, one of the eurozone's smallest economies.

Eric King: "Jim, we now know the answer to the 'Cyprus Solution'."

Sinclair: "Yes, Cyprus depositors have now been flushed. The Bank of Cyprus, the island's largest bank said it has converted 37.5% of deposits exceeding 100,000 euros into a Class A share, with an additional 22.5% held as a buffer for possible conversion in the future."

"Another 30% will be temporarily frozen and held as a deposit. So the amount of money that has been taken from the Cyprus depositors is in all practicality almost their entire accounts. Major depositors funds have now been taken in grand style. Depositors everywhere are now defined as lenders to the banks. Today is a day of financial infamy. History will see this event as serious as the flushing of Lehman Brothers... "

Sinclair: "There has been a total blackout in the Western mainstream media regarding what just took place in Cyprus. Even where there was even scant reporting about Cyprus, they only reported approximately 1/3 of the amount of the assets that have effectively been stolen. The takeaway I have, and the shock I have, is that the news is now so selective in the so-called free Western hemisphere..."

One video features a Washington DC doctor, Cesare Santangelo, who said that in the unlikely event that an abortion resulted in a live birth, “we would not help it.” Santangelo was answering repeated questions from an undercover operative about what would happen, hypothetically, if she gave birth after an unsuccessful abortion.

“I mean, technically, you know, legally, we would be obligated to help it, you know, to survive, but ... it probably wouldn’t,” Santangelo is shown telling the woman, who was 24 weeks pregnant. “It’s all in how vigorously you do things to help a fetus survive at this point.” Live Action president Lila Rose said the group’s videos expose “truly gruesome, illegal and inhuman practices.” She defended the tactics, saying undercover investigations are a powerful method to expose abuses.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Santangelo said he was trying to reassure the woman, who turned out to be an undercover operative of the group, Live Action. In reality, he said, he would call 9-1-1. But he said he stands by what he said on tape. “What I said is, basically I wouldn’t do anything extraordinary,” he said Saturday. “We would call EMS. We would call 9-1-1. But I wouldn’t do intubation or anything... You let nature take its course.”

The videos do not depict Santangelo doing anything illegal.

The disaster, in which several thousand people were buried alive in the collapsed Rana Plaza building in Savar, a suburb of the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, created sights and sounds that many will find hard to forget. At least 3,000 people are believed to have been in the building on Rana Plaza at the time the building collapsed. More than 380 bodies had been recovered by Monday morning. Hundreds are still missing. And with every day that passes, the chances of finding survivors grows dimmer.

The deadly incident in Savar has already been called the worst industrial accident in the country's history. It serves as a reminder that nothing has changed when it comes to the inhumane conditions under which clothes are made in Bangladesh for European and American textile companies and clothing chains. And the same can be said about the culture of corruption that is rampant in Bangladesh, the abundance of illegally procured construction permits and the lax attitude factory owners take toward safety standards.

Workers had noticed deep cracks in the building's walls on Tuesday, the day before it caved in. They warned the police, the regulatory authorities and the Exporters Association of Bangladesh. It was common knowledge that the owner had three extra stories added to the previously five-story building without a permit. A ninth floor was under construction when the disaster occurred.

The Bangladeshi garment industry employs some 4 million people and generates almost 80 percent of the country's export revenues. Threats by customers are therefore not taken lightly. As a result, manufacturers were understandably desperate to make up for lost time. Roy Ramesch Chandra, the head of a trade union in Dhaka, calls the disaster "murder in the name of profit." He says, "Bangladeshi workers had to pay with their lives so that foreign consumers could buy cheap clothes."

One thousand survivors and World War II vets joined with former President Bill Clinton and Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust activist Elie Wiesel to mark the museum’s 20th anniversary. “We felt it was important, while that generation is still with us in fairly substantial numbers, to bring them together,” said Museum Director Sara Bloomfield.

Since the museum opened 20 years ago, the world has made huge scientific discoveries, including the sequencing of the human genome, which proved humans are 99.5 percent genetically the same, Clinton said. “Every non age-related difference … is contained in one half of 1 percent of our genetic makeup, but every one of us spends too much time on that half a percent,” Clinton said. “That makes us vulnerable to the fever, the sickness that the Nazis gave to the Germans. That sickness is very alive across the world today.”