Joanna Stavropoulos is not proud of what she has done. "I had a guilty conscience when I withdrew my money from Greece," says the 43-year-old. Of course she knew what would happen if everybody does the same: Greece's banks would be threatened with collapse. But she says she had to think of her two-month-old daughter, Josephina, who is currently asleep on Joanna's shoulder. Increasing numbers of Greeks are following Joanna Stavropoulos' example and emptying their accounts. They are afraid that Greece may leave the euro zone and return to the drachma.

Stavropoulos is one of the few people who know very well what this scenario would look like in concrete terms. As a journalist and NGO worker, she has traveled all over the world, most recently in Haiti and Iraq. "I have been to countries where banks closed," she says.

She was in Argentina, for example, when the government declared a national default. She has also lived in Zimbabwe, where three-digit inflation destroyed the currency. Joanna is sure that Greece could face the same thing if it returns to the drachma.

"My country is going downhill," she says. There is still little sign of panic in Greece, and there has not been a stampede to the banks. Nevertheless, people are withdrawing hundreds of millions of euros from the banks every day. In May alone, outflows totaled €5 billion. According to official figures, €80 BILLION HAS BEEN WITHDRAWN SINCE THE START OF THE CRISIS.

Stavropoulos and her friends have a new strategy to deal with their daily expenses. "We charge everything to our credit cards," she says. If the Greek banks fail, they won't be able to collect the outstanding debts, she argues. "If they want to mess me around, I will do the same to them."

Finally, there is clarity. The Holy See has cleared things up and made the document accessible to all: a handout on checking whether apparitions of the Virgin Mary are authentic. Everything will be much easier from now on. The Roman Catholic Church has taken a step forward.

This "breaking news" from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) reveals the kinds of issues the Vatican is concerned with - and the kind of world in which some there live. It's a world in which the official Church investigation of Virgin Mary sightings is carefully regulated while cardinals in the Roman Curia, the Vatican's administrative and judicial apparatus, wield power with absolutely no checks and the pope's private correspondence turns up in the desk drawers of a butler.

It's a completely different apparition of the Virgin Mary that has pulled the Vatican and the Catholic Church into a new crisis, whose end and impact can only be surmised: the appearance of a source in the heart of the Church, a conspiracy against the pope and a leak code-named "Maria." Since the end of May, the pope's former butler, Paolo Gabriele, has been detained in a 35-square-meter (377-square-foot) cell at the Vatican, with a window but no TV. Using the code name "Maria," he allegedly smuggled faxes and letters out of the pope's private quarters. But it remains unclear who was directing him to do so.

Even with Gabriele's arrest, the leak still hasn't been plugged. More documents were released to the public last week, documents intended primarily to damage two close associates of Pope Benedict XVI: his private secretary, Georg Gänswein, and Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's top administrator. According to one document, "hundreds" of other secret documents would be published if Gänswein and Bertone weren't "kicked out of the Vatican." "This is blackmail," says Vatican expert Marco Politi. "It's like threatening total war."

Fear is running rampant in the Curia, where the mood has rarely been this miserable. It's as if someone had poked a stick into a beehive. Men wearing purple robes are rushing around, hectically monitoring correspondence. No one trusts anyone anymore, and some even hesitate to communicate by phone. It all began in the accursed seventh year of the papacy of Benedict XVI, with striking parallels to the latter part of Pope John Paul II's papacy. The same complaints about poor leadership and internal divisions are being aired outside the Vatican's walls, while the pope himself seems exhausted and no longer able to exert his power.

One way to look at Alexis Tsipras, the 37-year-old wunderkind of the Greek left, is as the leader of a small yet rapidly growing political party on the edge of Europe - a party that stands to attract some 3 million votes in Sunday's election. Three million votes out of a European Union population of a half billion. Just over half of 1 percent.

There is another way to look at Tsipras, however - as the European politician who, perhaps more than any other, holds the fate of the European common currency in his hands. It is this second interpretation that has the entire world gazing with fear as Greeks head to the polls this weekend. Tsipras, after all, has promised Greece that he will abandon the deep austerity measures imposed by the EU in exchange for bailout aid - with Brussels threatening to suspend those payments, and send Athens into bankruptcy, should he do so. It is a game of political chicken that could bring down Europe.

Central banks around the world are preparing for the potential financial earthquake that could accompany a victory of Tsipras' Syriza party. Reuters reports on Friday that central banks in Britain, Canada, Japan, China and India are all working on contingency plans or have said they are prepared to take measures to counter any financial market turbulence that could result from the vote.

European Central Bank head Mario Draghi said on Friday that the ECB is ready to provide further liquidity to euro-zone banks. "The ECB has the crucial role of providing liquidity to sound bank counterparties in return for adequate collateral," he said. "This is what we have done throughout the crisis … and this is what we will continue to do."

With the EU sovereign debt crisis worsening and growing fears for the global economy, the deep divisions within Opec risk undermining the organisation’s ability to do its job of effectively managing oil supply and preventing violent price swings. A person familiar with the matter said Opec’s meeting in Vienna on Thursday was overshadowed by “strong disagreements” over issues ranging from the acceptable price of oil, to the global supply-demand balance, to who should replace the current secretary general of the organisation.

A particular bone of contention was a proposal by Venezuela – backed by other Opec hardliners like Iran, Iraq and Algeria – that the group should protest against the EU sanctions against Tehran over its nuclear programme. The move was rebuffed by Saudi Arabia and other moderates including Nigeria, Libya and Kuwait, who argued that such protests were the preserve of foreign ministers, not oil ministers.

Riyadh is determined to prevent the group being dragged into Iran’s nuclear standoff with the west, and until Thursday, member states had done a good job of papering over their differences on the issue. “We have to make sure that Opec remains non-political,” said a Saudi official. “It is a business organisation and politics should be avoided.”

But the latest bust-up shows it could prove increasingly difficult to maintain that neutrality, with the issue of sanctions reinforcing already deep divisions between hardliners Iran, Venezuela and Algeria and moderates like Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies Kuwait and the UAE. The politicisation of Opec bodes ill for the future. “Oil and politics make a really toxic mix, as we saw with Opec in the 1970s,” said one analyst. He said the rift meant it would be harder for Opec to take “concerted action in the event of a major bout of price weakness”.

Riding a wave of anger to rise from obscurity to contender for power, leftist Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras, 37, promises to reject the punishing terms of the €130 billion ($163.75 billion) bailout if he wins the nail-biter vote on Sunday. On the right, establishment heir and New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras, 61, says that would send Greece crashing out of the single currency and condemn it to even greater economic calamity.

With the election set to go down to the wire, European leaders weighed in on Saturday, urging Greeks to vote with their heads. THE BAILOUT WILL NOT BE RENEGOTIATED, WARNED GERMAN CHANCELLOR ANGELA MERKEL, whose country's wealth is vital to shoring up its weaker partners in the bloc."That's why it's so important that the Greek elections preferably lead to a result in which those that will form a future government say: 'yes, we will stick to the agreements'," Merkel told a party conference of the Christian Democrats.

Eurogroup head Jean-Claude Juncker said there would be serious consequences if Syriza secured victory. "If the radical left wins - which cannot be ruled out - the consequences for the currency union are unforeseeable," Juncker, head of the group of euro zone finance ministers, told Austrian paper Kurier. "We will have to speak to any government. I can only warn everyone against leaving the currency union. THE INTERNAL COHESION OF THE EURO ZONE WOULD BE IN DANGER."

Chief monitor General Robert Mood said the fighting posed a threat to his unarmed observers, one of whose patrols was fired upon four days ago, and prevented them from carrying out their mandate to oversee Annan's widely-ignored April 12 ceasefire.

The Norwegian peacekeeper blamed both government troops and rebels for the relentless conflict, in which President Bashar al-Assad's forces are trying to crush an increasingly well-armed insurgency which grew out of a 15-month-old wave of protests. "There has been an intensification of armed violence across Syria over the past 10 days," Mood said.

"The lack of willingness by the parties to seek a peaceful transition, and the push towards advancing military positions is increasing the losses on both sides." Diplomats say Mood is expected to brief the United Nations Security Council on Monday or Tuesday about the unrest in Syria, which the head of UN peacekeeping said this week was in the throes of full-scale civil war.

If the measure, "The Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act", which will be on the ballot in November, passes, California will become the first state in the nation to require that GM foods be labeled as such on the package. This is not the first time that the issue has come up in California. Several labeling laws have been drafted there, but none has made it out of legislative committee. Lawmakers in states like Vermont and Connecticut have also proposed labeling legislation, which has gone nowhere in the face of stiff industry opposition. And the US Congress has likewise seen sporadic, unsuccessful attempts to mandate GM food labeling since 1999.

What makes the referendum in California different is that, for the first time, voters and not politicians will be the ones to decide. And this has the food industry worried. Understandably so, since only one in four Americans is convinced that GMOs are "basically safe", according to a survey conducted by the Mellman Group, and a big majority wants food containing GMOs to be labeled.

This is one of the few issues in America today that enjoys broad bipartisan support: 89% of Republicans and 90% of Democrats want genetically altered foods to be labeled, as they already are in 40 nations in Europe, in Brazil, and even in China. In 2007, then candidate [Mr] Obama latched onto this popular issue saying that he would push for labeling – a promise the president has yet to keep.

There are queues round the block for the last dribbles from the petrol pumps, and deliveries come to a halt. Within a day or two, protests have turned to looting and random acts of violence against strangers. Overwhelmed, the police retreat to their bases. The most vulnerable citizens lock the doors and pray. And gradually, the country that gave the world ‘democracy’ descends into another word it also created — ‘anarchy’.

Understandably, no one on the tense, graffiti-splattered streets of Athens wants to discuss this possibility ahead of tomorrow’s Greek election in case it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. For many, though, it is hard to envisage how much further they can fall. The most probable outcome is more procrastination and horse-trading — just like the dithering that followed the last, entirely inconclusive election in May, since when Greece has been without a government.

But deep down, everyone knows that the status quo cannot go on much longer. Greece is on borrowed time. Ultimately, Greeks face a choice between swallowing the austerity package imposed by the EU’s German paymasters — punitive taxation and a purge of the public sector — or they can be relegated from the euro and return to a much-devalued drachma. The second option would see the country’s existing wealth cut by half.

It is a nightmare scenario that some have called ‘Drachmageddon’. And it is one we in Britain will feel acutely as billions are wiped off the value of our shareholdings and pension funds as the markets tumble amid fears that Spain and Italy might be next.

The bleak assessment came on the eve of an important weekend that will see elections in Greece and France and a key G20 meeting of world leaders in Mexico. “Europe must discuss the growing differences in economic strength between France and Germany," she said. Tensions are running so high that Jean-Marc Ayrault, the French prime minister, was forced to deny that Paris had broken off the Franco-German partnership, following Berlin anger at a Franco-Italian summit in Rome on Thursday.

There was a growing sense of crisis in European capitals after David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, took part in a tense conference call with Mrs Merkel, Mr Hollande and Mario Monti, the Italian prime minister.

G20 leaders meet in Los Cabos on Monday afternoon for talks dominated by the deepening eurozone crisis and the result of close elections that could put Greece on course to leave the EU's single currency. Eurozone finance ministers are on standby for an emergency telephone conference on Sunday night, if Greek exit polls put the radical Left Syriza coalition in the lead, to trigger contingency plans, including possible capital controls in the event of a run on banks in Greece, Portugal or Spain.

A victory for Syriza could prompt a default and Greek exit of the eurozone. In the event of political chaos in Greece or a financial meltdown drawing in Spain and Italy on Monday following the result of the Greek elections, an emergency meeting of G7 ministers will be held in the wings of the G20 gathering in the Mexican resort.

The miners in Asturias were protesting the government’s plans to cut by almost two thirds the €300 million subsidies to the industry. Activists say as many as 4,000 jobs are at risk of disappearing due to the austerity measures. Protesters were trying to block roads with burning tires, the Interior Ministry said. At least four of those injured were police officers trying to restore the order, while another was a journalist, who was hit by a rubber bullet in the chest.

Spain is one of the economies worst hit by the ongoing European crisis, which forced the government to make a number of painful spending cuts. On Saturday, eurozone ministers agreed to lend Madrid up to €100 billion to help bail out its struggling banks. Spanish miners have been on strike all across northern Spain for weeks.

Rajoy’s proclamation that this bailout shows what a success the euro-zone has been, sends Farage over the edge as he sees the Spaniard as just about the most incompetent leader in the whole of Europe (up there with favorites like Van Rompuy and Barroso).

The erudite Englishman notes that by any objective criteria “The Euro Has Failed” expanding on the insane farce of Italy funding Spain’s banking bailout at a loss (borrowing at 6% to fund a loan at 3%). “This ‘genius’ deal makes things worse not better” as it merely drives other nations towards needing bailouts themselves and while his socialist colleagues in the room are mumbling and checking their blackberries, he reminds them that Spanish national debt will surge and that 100 billion does not solve the problem, and that if Greece leaves, the ECB is failed, is gone, and to rectify this there will be a cash call from the very same PIIS (Ex-G) that are tumbling towards the abyss.

Blood pressure surges as he screams “you couldn’t make this up” concluding that “the Euro Titanic has now hit the Iceberg and sadly there simply aren’t enough lifeboats.”

Video - http://www.blacklistednews.com/VIDEO__Farage%3A_%E2%80%9CThe_Euro_Titanic_Has_Now_Hit_The_Iceberg%E2%80%9D/19996/0/38/38/Y/M.html

In several decades of listening to this address ranging from the banking and sterling crises of the 1970s to the exit from the exchange rate mechanism in 1992 it would be hard to remember a Governor of the Bank of England speaking in such apocalyptic terms. Sir Mervyn’s burning frustration with Europe’s paralysed political classes and the pain and misery they are delivering to households and businesses in Britain and across the Continent came through loud and clear.

The better news is that the UK is better able than our European partners to deal with what Sir Mervyn calls an ‘ugly picture’ that is increasingly starting to look like a second Great Depression. Gordon Brown’s decision to keep us out of euroland, control over our own interest rates and credit and the Cameron government’s measures to restore some budgetary discipline mean that the Treasury and the Bank do have some room to manoeuvre.

The only regret must be that the Chancellor George Osborne did not see the banking and economic tsunami coming from across the Channel a little earlier making sure that businesses of all sizes could obtain credit, at reasonable rates, so as to sustain growth. In the case of a total eurozone meltdown the UK banks would be on the hook for an estimated £168 billion of losses.

Finally, it seems our policymakers have grasped the scale of the disaster facing both the European financial system and growth and are acting with some speed to deal with it. Economic catastrophes demand dramatic solutions.

This would be done if the draft of an economic agreement between the Jewish state and the Holy See, containing no distinction between sovereign Israel and the territories occupied by it in 1967, is approved by the two sides, Ha'aretz online reported. The lack of a preamble containing such a distinction is at the center of heightened tension between Palestinian Christian denominations and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and the Vatican, it said.

Palestinian sources told the Israeli daily that THE AGREEMENT WOULD MEAN "INDIRECT RECOGNITION" OF ISRAELI ANNEXATION OF EAST JERUSALEM AND OF THE IMPOSITION OF ISRAELI LAW IN PART OF THE WEST BANK.

France, which has special standing as custodian of holy Christian sites and Christian communities, is also said to be concerned at the apparent latent recognition of the annexation and the economic implications for the communities, and particularly its Christian institutions in the country and the people who are part of them, the report said. The Bilateral Permanent Working Commission between the Holy See and the State of Israel is to meet in Rome today and tomorrow to continue with talks held in Jerusalem last week, addressing matters of disagreement.

The bishops released a statement on Thursday as they announced the two-week event.

“Some recent threats to religious freedom include the HHS mandate to provide coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization and contraception; forcing Catholic foster care and adoption services to shut down for refusal to place children with same-sex couples; state immigration laws that forbid pastoral care of undocumented immigrants; discrimination against Catholic humanitarian services for victims of human trafficking for refusal to refer for abortion services,” the bishops maintained.

At least 9,000 Christians from the western Syrian city of Qusayr were forced to seek refuge after an ultimatum from a local military chief of the armed opposition, Abdel Salam Harba, Fides news agency reports. In the latest outburst of violence a Christian man was shot dead by a sniper in Qusayr, which neighbors the restive city of Homs.

There have been reports last week that some mosques in the city have announced from the minarets: "Christians must leave Qusayr within six days, which expires this Friday." Two Catholic priests who fled Qusayr confirmed to the news agency that they heard the ultimatum "with their own ears" repeated from the minarets.

"The situation is unsustainable in the area and exposed to total lawlessness," Fides sources on the ground say. They also fear that the fate of Christians in Qusayr could soon affect the 10,000 believers who live in other villages in the area. Christians make up about 10 per cent of the country’s population with most belonging to the denomination of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch.