Greece's vote, combined with the victory of Socialist Francois Hollande over incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in a French presidential election, will raise pressure on Europe's paymaster Germany to pursue a more growth-oriented approach to the crisis. But it is far from clear whether Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose insistence on tough deficit reduction in vulnerable southern euro members is popular in Germany, will take more than symbolic steps in that direction, even after Sunday's elections.

"This shows that politics is getting out of control in Europe, the gap between politicians and voters is widening, that's what you see in Greece, that's what you see in France," said Steen Jakobsen, chief economist at Saxo Bank in Copenhagen. "Clearly, voters across Europe have started to send the message: ‘we are not ready to do the reforms’, and that's worrying." More immediately, the struggle of Greece's two big pro-bailout parties - conservative New Democracy and socialist PASOK - to secure a parliamentary majority raises questions about whether Athens can stay in the euro zone in the long run, and may spark a new wave of contagion to other member states.

The Greek result puts Hollande, a novice on the international stage who has never held a ministerial post nor met Merkel, in the hot seat from day one. Investors worried about Greece's future and the arrival of the first Socialist in the Elysee Palace in 17 years, could punish European financial markets starting on Monday, pushing the entire bloc back towards crisis-mode.

European stock markets fell, with Germany's Dax trading 1.2% lower. By late-morning, the Cac 40 in Paris was trading down 0.9%. Athens shares were trading down by 8.3%. London markets are closed for a public holiday. European markets had also fallen sharply on Friday following the release of US unemployment figures. The interest rates on some government debt has also gone up, indicating a fall in investor confidence. The yields in the secondary markets for Greek 10-year bonds has gone up from 20% to 22.2%. The yield on French 10-year bonds has also risen from 2.81% to 2.84%. Asian markets also fell, with the Nikkei in Tokyo dropping 2.8%.

In Greece, the socialist Pasok party saw an unexpectedly poor result, while Syriza, which has opposed austerity measures, had a strong performance. The result has cast doubt on whether the country's policies that currently include spending cuts, tax increases and state job losses, can continue. "The Greek side of things is a ticking time bomb," Justin Harper of IG Markets told the BBC. "The fear now is that all the hard work that had gone into getting the second bailout package may start to unravel and we can expect some real pressure on stock markets in the coming days."

BBC Europe editor Gavin Hewitt says Greece faces political turmoil. "Pro-austerity parties were punished at the polls. The country will struggle to form a coalition that has the support in parliament for new spending cuts that are a pre-condition for receiving funds from a bailout," he said. "There will be fresh doubts as to whether Greece can remain in the euro. The new political reality in Europe is that voters appear no longer willing to accept spending cuts, low growth and unemployment."

The result is seen as a rejection of the tough terms of two EU/IMF bailouts. A radical left coalition, Syriza, came second after New Democracy, and a neo-Nazi party polled almost 7%. With about 99% of votes counted, centre-right New Democracy (ND) is leading with 18.9%, down from 33.5% in 2009. Party leader Antonis Samaras is set to meet President Karolos Papoulias, who will ask him to form a government. Mr Samaras will try to form a unity government to keep the country in the euro although he has promised to try to "amend" the bailout terms in order to boost growth.

ND and the socialist Pasok have between them run Greece since the 1970s. Since November, they have been in a coalition led by technocrat Prime Minister Lucas Papademos. Pasok could manage only third place with 13.2%, down from 43.9% in the last elections and behind Syriza, which polled 16.8% and opposes the government's austerity measures. The neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, with almost 7% of the vote, is on course for at least 20 seats in parliament.

Party leader Antonis Samaras is set to meet President Karolos Papoulias, who will ask him to form a government. Mr Samaras will try to form a unity government to keep the country in the euro although he has promised to try to "amend" the bailout terms in order to boost growth. ND and the socialist Pasok have between them run Greece since the 1970s. Since November, they have been in a coalition led by technocrat Prime Minister Lucas Papademos.

The Socialist leader won just under 52% of votes in Sunday's run-off election. Centre-right incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy is the first French president since 1981 not to win a second term. Mr Sarkozy will hand power to Mr Hollande on 15 May, following talks between the two camps, the presidency has said. Mr Hollande has called for a renegotiation of a hard-won European treaty on budget discipline championed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mr Sarkozy.

Mrs Merkel congratulated the president-elect by phone and invited him to Berlin to hold talks soon. Mr Hollande's campaign director, Pierre Moscovici, told AFP news agency that the two had agreed to work together on "a strong Franco-German relationship in the interest of Europe". Mr Hollande feeds a renewed sense of hope in the country - particularly among the young - that amid the austerity, there can be jobs and salaries, our correspondent adds. Mr Hollande offers a fresh start - but the debt problems for France are still the same.

In over 30 years in politics Mr Hollande has never served as a minister. For much of his tenure as the party's first secretary from 1997 to 2008 he was seen as a consensus manager - a listener more than a visionary. Now he must lead, making tough choices to put France on the path to recovery.

But political leaders were on Sunday night conceding the consensus had been shattered beyond repair. With Europe's economies plunging further into recession and as unemployment in the eurozone breaks record levels, voters demands for a new approach had finally become too great to ignore. The popular backlash to EU imposed austerity to the centrist New Democracy and Socialist parties in Greece threatens the existence of the euro itself.

Greece is potentially ungovernable as a minority government must try and pass a new raft of austerity measures next month which are a condition of an EU-IMF bailout and Greek membership of the euro. In France, while Hollande, the Socialist President-elect is a centrist, he is sitting on a powder keg of resentment at measures that his government will have to pass if it is not to spark a meltdown of financial markets. He has refused to ratify the treaty unless the eurozone and EU also sign up to a "growth pact".

Mr Hollande also horrified Berlin by sneering at the idea that France should change its constitution to enshrine a "debt brake" outlawing Socialist spending levels. In a meeting in Berlin next week, Chancellor Merkel is set to warn the French President, that weakening austerity pledges would rattle markets and undermine investor confidence at a critical time for the eurozone's economy.

Analysts say the vote has wide implications for the whole eurozone. Mr Hollande has vowed to rework a deal on government debt in member countries. Shortly after polls closed at 20:00 (18:00), French media published projections based on partial results giving Mr Hollande a lead of almost four points. Exuberant Hollande supporters gathered on Place de la Bastille in Paris - a traditional rallying point of the Left - to celebrate.

Mr Hollande - the first socialist to win the French presidency since Francois Mitterrand in the 1980s - gave his victory speech in his stronghold of Tulle in central France. He said he was "proud to have been capable of giving people hope again". He said he would push ahead with his pledge to refocus EU fiscal efforts from austerity to "growth". "Europe is watching us, austerity can no longer be the only option," he said.

Mr Hollande has called for a renegotiation of a hard-won European treaty on budget discipline championed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mr Sarkozy. Mr Hollande capitalised on the country's economic woes and President Sarkozy's unpopularity. The socialist candidate has promised to raise taxes on big corporations and people earning more than €1 million a year. He wants to raise the minimum wage, hire 60,000 more teachers and lower the retirement age from 62 to 60 for some workers.

The new president is expected to be inaugurated later this month. A parliamentary election is due in June.

For most of the years that Andrew Wood has worked as a country vet in a pleasant, affluent part of East Sussex, the job has played out much as he expected – tending to little girls' ponies, old ladies' cats, occasional zoo calls and a fair chunk of farm work in between. But recently something stranger and darker has been taking up Mr Wood's time. A mysterious bug known as Schmallenberg virus has hit East Sussex hard, leaving thousands of hideously-deformed newborn animals in its wake. Most of the casualties to date are lambs but there are now cattle succumbing too, amid fears for other livestock.

"I've not seen damage like this before," said Mr Wood, 37, who works at a practice in Uckfield. "I grew up on a farm, the animals get to be like family, and it's hard not to be affected." The most widely accepted theory is that the virus was carried to Britain by midges from Holland and Germany, where the disease first emerged last year. Strong winds supposedly blew infected insects across the sea in the autumn. On arrival they attacked farms, but the disease remained hidden until the lambing season began at the start of this year, when cases began to appear in southern and eastern England.

Not everyone believes that windblown midges are to blame. Some doubt that the insects could have made the crossing so easily to so many places and in such numbers, and think it more likely that they took advantage of Britain's much-criticised standards of biosecurity to hitchhike over on cars and lorries. Others reject the midge theory entirely – citing causes that range from radioactive contamination from Japan's wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant to genetically-modified animal feed.

Whatever the truth, the virus's calling card is a frightening one. Across the south – and, recently, as far north as Lincolnshire – animals are being born with grotesque deformities, including misshapen heads and twisted limbs. The farms worst hit by the virus have lost up to 20% of their lambs – a catastrophe that can translate into tens of thousands of pounds of income.

He said it was ‘feasible’ that remote-controlled aircraft filled with poison and small enough to fit into a backpack could be used as a biological weapon in the capital. He told The Mail on Sunday: ‘An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) can be put in a backpack. They come in all sorts of sizes and it’s feasible they could be filled with something noxious and flown by remote-control.’

Lieutenant Colonel Fahy – the officer responsible for community relations during the Games – made his remarks on Friday in Leytonstone, East London, near one of six sites which could see the deployment of surface-to air missile batteries in order to shoot down aircraft attempting to infiltrate an Olympic ‘no fly’ zone. During the meeting at Buxton School, his team showed locals a ‘dummy’ missile battery and allowed children to play on the unarmed weapon.

Lieutenant Colonel Fahy declined to elaborate on what type of poison might be used during an aerial attack. He said: ‘For the duration of the Olympics anyone flying into controlled airspace is to file their flight plan with the Civil Aviation Authority. The range of threats varies in size and capability. It could be a commercial airliner hijacked by somebody with malicious intentions or a protest group using a microlight to get their name in the papers.’ His poison warning came as it was revealed that SAS troops have had anthrax emergency training at the Government’s top-secret military research establishment at Porton Down, Wiltshire.

But the staunchly pro-Europe Lord Mandelson will admit that further EU integration cannot be foisted on to the British public without an in/out referendum. He will say that the European mandate secured by the Heath government in the 1970s ‘belongs to another time and another generation’. ‘I believe a fresh referendum on this will be necessary because the political parties cannot reconcile their own differences and come to a final conclusion on their own, and nor should they,’ he will say.

He will make his demand for a ballot in a speech in Oxford today in a move that is at odds with Labour’s opposition to a referendum. The former EU Trade Commissioner’s intervention will also be used as ammunition from David Cameron’s Eurosceptic backbenchers to pile pressure on the Prime Minister to hold a referendum.

Lord Mandelson will say the referendum should take place once the Eurozone crisis has ended and the case can be made for a stronger fiscal union. ‘At that stage, a referendum would be a healthy means of re-establishing a consensus – among Britons, and among the nations of Britain for that matter - about Britain’s place in the world and the role Europe should play in that,’ he will say.

The procedure, which involves injecting a single sperm into an egg, is used in both the NHS and the private sector, and now represents more than half of all IVF treatments. But it is more expensive than standard IVF, raising fears some clinics may be promoting it to increase profits. Scientists behind the latest survey of 300,000 births found that one child in ten born following ICSI has a defect – twice the level of the general population – but that standard IVF has no extra risks compared with natural births.

Following the report, other experts called for clinics to use ICSI only when there was no medical alternative, and demanded a national database of children born from IVF be set up urgently. Women who undergo the most popular IVF treatment in Britain are twice as likely to have babies with birth defects as the rest of the population, the shocking new survey revealed. Women who undergo the ICSI process, are more likely to have a baby with problems including cleft palate, heart and lung conditions, cerebral palsy and blood disorders.

The extensive research found that ten in every 100 births from ICSI had a defect, compared with five in 100 natural births. But other forms of IVF are no more risky than natural conception. When other factors such as the mother’s age, smoking habits and underlying health problems are taken into account, the ICSI treatment is linked to a 57 per cent increase in birth defects, compared to natural conception.

By “get it” I mean that he still seems to believe that he personally behaved appropriately in the circumstances by which the late Father Brendan Smyth, a rapacious paedophile of almost unimaginable moral corruption, was tacitly permitted by the Church to continue brutally abusing children for 40 years, long after the ecclesiastical authorities knew what he was up to.

We are all aware now that paedophiles may seek to conceal their abuse by presenting it to the victim as “our little secret”. The younger Father Brady was instrumental in turning Brendan Smyth’s abuse into the Church’s little secret. The children’s parents, who would have been a source of both outrage and protection, were deliberately not informed, and nor were the police. The Church saw a choice between protecting its own reputation, and shielding young children from ferocious abuse, and it unhesitatingly chose to protect itself.

I have every confidence that had Jesus been in the room when Brendan Boland stuttered out his agonising evidence, the subsequent consequences for Smyth would have been immediate and forceful. Jesus was not in the room, however: just a group of apprehensive men acutely conscious that their hierarchical institution might lose face.

Well, it has now lost more than face, and I lament the distress that has been caused to Catholics of deep and genuine faith, as well as to those courageous priests who have always sought to live as they believe. But the authority of the Church needs to move closer to the authority of Christ. The trouble with Cardinal Brady is that he still does not seem to understand the difference.

“It’s never going to happen that the government at gunpoint says, ‘You’re going to have a tracking chip,’” said Katherine Albrecht, who with Liz McIntyre authored “Spychips,” a book that warns of the threat to privacy posed by Radio Frequency Identification. “It’s always in incremental steps. If you can put a microchip in someone that doesn’t track them… everybody looks and says, ‘Come on,’” she said. “It’ll be interesting seeing where we go.”

According to a report at Mobiledia, the US military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has confirmed plans to create nanosensors to monitor the health of soldiers on battlefields. The devices also would report data to doctors. But privacy analysts have expressed concern that the implants could be used not just to monitor health but to keep track of and possibly control people.

DARPA describes the technology on which it is working as “a truly disruptive innovation,” which would diagnose, monitor vital stats and “even deliver medicine into the bloodstream.” According to LiveScience.com, “Solving the problem of sickness could have a huge impact on the number of soldiers ready to fight, because far more have historically died due to illness rather than combat.”

The gloomy surveys clashed with the picture painted by European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, who on Thursday spoke of a gradual recovery taking place in the euro zone during the course of the year - although he did speak about risks. In the United States, a government report showed employers added a disappointing 115,000 workers to payrolls last month and, critically, many Americans stopped looking for work. Economists had expected 170,000 new nonfarm jobs, and the report could hurt President Barack Obama as he steps up a re-election campaign that will likely hinge on the state of the economy.

Though the US unemployment rate edged down to 8.1 percent from 8.2 percent, the SPX fell sharply as fears grew that the erratic recovery of the world's largest economy was sputtering. "This shows just how painfully slowly the US economy is growing," said Thanos Bardas, a portfolio manager at Neuberger Berman in Chicago, which manages nearly $200 billion in assets.

The US government did, however, revise upward earlier estimates of payroll growth in February and March, and the euro zone surveys indicated better progress among Chinese companies.

But positive signs were few.

This isn't the premise of the latest doomsday thriller. Massive solar storms have happened before — and another one is likely to occur soon, according to Mike Hapgood, a space weather scientist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, England. Much of the planet's electronic equipment, as well as orbiting satellites, have been built to withstand these periodic geomagnetic storms. But the world is still not prepared for a truly damaging solar storm, Hapgood argues in a recent commentary published in the journal Nature.

What exactly is a solar storm?

Solar flares mainly emit X-rays — we also get radio waves from these things, and white light in the brightest of flares. They all travel at the same speed as light, so it takes eight minutes to arrive. There are some effects from flares, such as radio interference from the radio bursts. But that's a pretty small-beer thing. The big thing is the geomagnetic storms [on Earth] that affect the power grid, and that's caused by the coronal mass ejections [from the sun].

What happens when those particles reach Earth?

There can be a whole range of effects. The classic one everyone quotes is the effect on the power grid. A big geomagnetic storm can essentially put extra electric currents into the grid. If it gets bad enough, you can have a complete failure of the power grid — it happened in Quebec back in 1989. If you've got that, then you've just got to get it back on again. But you could also damage the transformers, which would make it much harder to get the electric power back.

How else could people be affected?

You get big disturbances in the Earth's upper atmosphere — what we call the ionosphere — and that could be very disruptive to things like GPS [the network of global positioning system satellites]. Given the extent we use GPS in everyday life [including for cellphone networks, shipping safety and financial transaction records], that's a big issue. The storms can also disrupt communications on transoceanic flights. Sometimes when that happens, they will either divert or cancel flights. So that would be like the disruption we had in Europe from the volcano two years ago, where they had to close down airspace for safety reasons.

The implications of French and Greek elections for the region's drive to impose fiscal austerity will be crucial, while March readings on industrial production in Spain, Germany, Italy and France will also highlight the challenges facing the region. China takes centre stage towards the end of the week with the release of inflation, retail and factory output numbers, as signs of a weaker US economic performance and the deepening recession in Europe make Asia's strength more crucial.

The disappointing 115,000 increase in US non-farm payrolls in April reported on Friday has served to heighten fears the recovery in the world's biggest economy is fading, and will put speculation about the Federal Reserve's next move high on the agenda. For global asset managers the week's news and data should not significantly alter a view that has been dominated by moderate risk-on positions weighted towards US and Asian equities and some commodities, offset by an underweight holding of European assets.

"Europe is definitely going to be an 'ex-growth' part of the world just because of the bank deleveraging going on, and that's not even bringing into play the euro crisis." But for now Robertson said fear is a dominant sentiment in the markets, centered on whether euro zone bank restructuring and government spending reforms will take place. "Investors are far from convinced. Apart from the ECB, the rest of the policymakers are not acting tremendously dynamically."