It wasn't so long ago that the Spanish banking system was the subject of glowing praise. As financial institutions in Germany and many other European Union countries began to falter because they had badly gambled on high-risk US mortgage securities, the situation remained remarkably quiet in the southwestern part of the continent. The reason was that Spanish banking regulators had largely restricted the country's banks from engaging in the risky business.

In the meantime, Spain's banks are now amongst the greatest problem children in the euro zone. Developments on Wednesday night underscored just how dire the situation has become. The Spanish government announced that Bankia, the country's fourth-largest financial institution, would be largely nationalized. The announcement, made with little notice, suggests a hectic situation. The cabinet of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy had actually been planning to announce a new bailout program on Friday.

So what led the situation in the Spanish banking market to escalate so quickly? The problem was that the Spanish regulators recognized the threat abroad, but not the one that was brewing at home. Just like in the United States, a real estate bubble had also grown in Spain. The only difference between the two was that Spain's wasn't hidden in the form of complicated financial products. Spain's cajas, or savings banks, speculated badly with normal loans.

Meanwhile, the developments with Bankia will do little to strengthen the Spaniards' faith in their financial system. In July 2011, shares in Bankia were floated publicly, and it was primarily Spanish investors who bought them. They were promised a safe investment, but Bankia share prices began plummeting in February. Within less than a year, shares had lost more than 40 percent of their value.

Yashuhiro Yoshida, director for earthquake investigation at the science ministry, said, "It's possible that [parts of] the mountain could collapse with mudslides flowing to Gotenba." A team of researchers, led by academics from the University of Tokyo, fired simulated seismic waves at the mountain, which revealed a fault that was theoretically capable of generating an earthquake of up to magnitude seven. The researchers said they believed the fault moved some time in the last million years, although it was not clear when.

Yoshida said local geography showed that Mount Fuji experienced major mudslides nearly 3,000 years ago but that more studies were required to determine how the fault could affect potential volcanic activity. The area around the mountain, an almost-perfect volcanic cone that is much admired for its beauty, is known for having frequent earthquakes and numerous fault lines, even for quake-prone Japan.

Japan has been on heightened alert for possible quakes and other natural hazards since the 9.0 magnitude quake and the tsunami of March 2011 killed 19,000 people and sparked a nuclear emergency at a Fukushima nuclear complex.

The losses stemmed from wagers gone wrong in the bank's Chief Investment Office, which manages risk for the New York company. The Wall Street Journal reported early last month that large positions taken in that office by a trader nicknamed "the London whale" had roiled a sector of the debt markets. The bank, betting on a continued economic recovery with a complex web of trades tied to the values of corporate bonds, was hit hard when prices moved against it starting last month, causing losses in many of its derivatives positions. The losses occurred while JP Morgan tried to scale back that trade.

The bank's strategy was "flawed, complex, poorly reviewed, poorly executed and poorly monitored," Mr Dimon said Thursday in a hastily arranged conference call with analysts and investors after the stock-market close. He called the mistake "egregious, self-inflicted," and said: "We will admit it, we will fix it and move on," he said. The CEO emphasized that the bank remains profitable despite the trading loss. "While we don't give overall earnings guidance and we are not confirming current analyst estimates, if you did adjust current analyst estimates for the loss, we still earned approximately $4 billion after-tax this quarter give or take," he said on the call. The bank earned $5.38 billion in the first quarter.

JP Morgan, the nation's largest bank by assets, said in its quarterly filing with regulators Thursday that the plan it has been using to hedge risks "has proven to be riskier, more volatile and less effective as an economic hedge than the firm previously believed."

US government officials told Channel 10 News that they believe a Likud-Kadima joint government could make a decision about an Israeli attack on Iran at any moment and perhaps even before the US presidential elections in November. The report said that when the Americans believed early elections would be held in Israel on September, they thought it meant the attack in Iran would be postponed at least until after the election. Now, with the stabilization of Israeli politics and the current government likely to end its term on schedule, the situation has changed and the Americans are concerned.

According to the Channel 10 report, in order to try and prevent or at least postpone the Israeli decision on the issue, the Americans recently held marathon talks with Israeli officials at all levels. Israel – like the United States, its European allies, and Gulf Arab states – believe Iran is conducting nuclear work with military applications. Defense Minister Ehud Barak recently warned that as long as Iran poses a threat to Israel with its nuclear program, all options are on the table.

“I have enough experience to know that a military option is not a simple one,” Barak added. “It would be complicated with certain associated risks. But a radical Islamic Republic of Iran with nuclear weapons would be far more dangerous both for the region and, indeed, the world.”

From the end of the Soviet Union - which spawned currencies such as the Estonian Kroon and the Kazakh Tenge - to the introduction of the euro, they have had plenty of practice in preparing their systems to cope with change. Planning behind the scenes has been underway since Europe's debt crisis erupted in Greece in 2009, said US-based Hartmut Grossman of ICS Risk Advisors who works with Wall Street banks.

"A lot of the firms, particularly in Europe and also here, have been looking at that for a long time," said Grossman, who added that the latest Greek political crisis had brought matters "to a little bit of a head. But there really has been contingency planning at all of the financial institutions for that to happen... Greece leaving the euro zone is not a new idea," he said.

The EU says it wants Greece to stay in the common currency, and opinion polls show Greeks want to keep it. But they also voted last Sunday for parties opposed to a bailout with the EU and IMF, throwing Greece's future in the bloc back into doubt. The elections threw into doubt the EU/IMF aid package that came at the price of harsh austerity measures, and was reached only after much haggling between banks and politicians over a 100 billion euro debt reduction.

In becoming the first US president to publicly support gay marriage, polling analysts said Thursday, [Mr] Obama essentially is betting that his decision will generate enough enthusiasm among young people to offset any votes he will lose from moderate and conservative whites who disagree with him.

A key part of [Mr] Obama's calculus, analysts said, also will be to hold on to the enormous majority he enjoys among black voters. Church-going blacks are divided over gay marriage but pollsters say they are unlikely to vote for Republican Mitt Romney over [Mr] Obama, the nation's first black president, in November.

"From a strategic vantage point, Obama is making a good decision here because this is the direction the country is going," said Ipsos pollster Chris Jackson. "Support for gay marriage has gone from the low teens to a near or outright majority of the country supporting it over the course of the last couple decades."

It advocated "total war" against all the world's Muslims, including possible nuclear attacks on the holy cities of Mecca and Medina and the wiping out of civilian populations. The Pentagon has confirmed the course material found on their website is authentic.

As far as I can see this is not intended in any sense as a rather sick academic exercise in stretching the bounds of what could be thought. It is actually what the officer teaching it believes. In other words: completely nutty stuff that would disgrace the wilder fringes of the blogosphere.

So, not surprisingly, General Dempsey has ordered a full investigation into what other US military schools might be teaching about the religion. The voluntary course aimed at senior officers was taught at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia, for a year. General Dempsey described the course as "counter to our values of appreciation for religious freedom and cultural awareness" and "just objectionable, academically irresponsible".

It came to light when one of the officers on the course complained last month. There is now an investigation into how the course was approved and why it was part of the curriculum. A lieutenant colonel has been suspended from teaching, but for the moment keeps his job. The Pentagon hopes a full report will be out by the end of the month. What does seem rather surprising is that all those commanders, captains and colonels must have sat through the course and not felt the need to tell someone that something rather weird was going on.

Mr Marcus was a member of the panel that wrote the report, but he said it “failed to address the deeper causes” of the violence. Writing in the Spectator, he said few are willing to admit that an “epidemic of father absence” had lead to a vacuum which is now filled by dangerous gangs that give young people security, identity, loyalty and money.

“Many may be in denial of this reality - but in many parts of our country this culture now owns the streets and last August it simply did what it says on the tin,” he said. He blamed gang culture for “dominating areas” as the disintegration of the traditional family has demoralised and fractured society. Mr Marcus, the founder of the Boxing Academy charity, said it was more likely that half the rioters were involved with gangs than the 13 per cent identified by the official investigation.

“Around the country, for instance, high-ranking police continually refused to accept that the riots were in any way gang-related,” he said. “There sometimes seemed an iron curtain between the politically correct local government elite and the people they are meant to work for,” he said.

This will become necessary, if the crisis cannot be mastered with the current austerity dictates. This is precisely what German, but particularly foreign, experts have been warning against for years. The German austerity demands risk "ultimately to further exacerbate the debt crisis," writes, for example, one of the critics also in the new edition of "internationale Politik."

His analysis is a damning indictment of German attempts to dominate the EU. Berlin's crisis policy needs to be fundamentally revised, he concludes. However, "Internationale Politik" presents proposals for a change of course, based on and including these austerity dictates, including supplementary rights of EU intervention to subvert the competence of democratically elected governments that would reinforce German hegemony over Europe.

The article was authored by Andreas Rinke, senior political correspondent of the Berlin office of Reuters News Agency. Rinke described a proposal - he has superb contacts to the Berlin establishment - aimed at a supplementary abrogation of national sovereignty within the EU, "National governments will be relieved of their authority to decide economic questions and those of social policy," and will be obliged to follow directives set by Brussels. Given the experience of German crisis dictates over the past two years, it would not be difficult to guess, who would table such a proposal.

Rinke speculates that the extensive disempowerment of democratically elected parliaments, which, after their financial prerogatives, now are to be deprived also of their prerogatives in economic and social policies, could be accomplished - as with the Fiscal Stability Treaty - with a "Growth Stability Treaty," signed by all EU countries except Great Britain.

“The public is going back a hundred years, blaming the financial crisis on the Jews, the old scapegoat.” Rabbi Prisis added, “The Jews of Greece may soon consider mass immigration to Israel. The Israeli government should pressure Greece in this direction.”

Tehran is spending the currency, which is not freely convertible, on goods and services imported from China. Most of the oil that goes from Iran to China is handled by the Unipec trading arm of Sinopec, China’s second-largest oil company, and through another trading company called Zhuhai Zhenrong, the oil industry executives said. The trade is worth as much as $20-$30 billion annually according to industry estimates, but a share of it is in barter form. Zhuhai Zhenrong, for example, pays Iran for its oil by providing services such as drilling, executives add.

Well, giving back Mount Rushmore would be a start. That’s among several suggestions made by United Nations special rapporteur James Anaya, who will formally recommend the US restore land previously owned by various tribes — including the Black Hills of South Dakota, home of the famous national monument.

In a 12-day fact-finding mission, Anaya visited tribes from Oklahoma to Oregon and Alaska to South Dakota to gauge the impact of the UN’s proposed Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which President Barack Obama said in December 2010 that the US plans to sign. In his findings, which he’ll present to the UN’s Human Rights Council in September, he says that restoring land would prove the biggest step in providing reconciliation for the tribes. Some of the land most sought by the various tribes includes the Black Hills.

“In all my consultations with indigenous peoples in the places I visited it was impressed upon me that the sense of loss, alienation and indignity is pervasive throughout Indian Country,” Anaya told the Associated Press. But being that no members of the US Congress were willing to meet with Anaya, don’t expect too much movement domestically on his recommendations. And even if [Mr] Obama signs the declaration, there may not be much change either; the UN document is non-binding.

The turmoil was triggered after the leader of Greece’s left-wing Syriza bloc said he would try to forge a coalition government that would tear up the austerity deal that underpins the country’s £190 billion bail-out. Alexis Tsipras’s radical plans would see Greece default on its debts and be ejected from the single currency.

However, it is far from certain that he will win enough support to form a government, so another election next month is a strong possibility – casting more doubt on Greece’s future. There were similar falls on other markets, with Germany’s Dax down nearly two per cent, France’s Cac-40 nearly three per cent lower and the Dow Jones Industrial Average in the US more than one per cent lower as London closed. The Greek stock market closed at its lowest level since 1992.

Eurozone worries saw the pound now buying 1.24 euros – a three-and-a-half-year high against the single currency. This is good news for holidaymakers travelling to the continent but a blow to exporters.

And the highlight of the taxpayer-funded event will be a live performance by a 69-year-old DJ called Mamy Rock. The attractions are being staged in the European quarter of the Belgian capital on Saturday in a Festival of Europe Open Day at the EU’s institutions. It is planned around today’s Europe Day anniversary of the foundation of the first step towards European union. But last night, critics were appalled that Brussels chiefs were staging a celebration at a time of worsening political and economic crisis across the EU.

Euro MP Paul Nuttall, deputy leader of Ukip, said: “I am sure the millions left destitute and unemployed by the EU’s ruinous policies will join me in denouncing these events. The Eurocrats are laughing at us – at our expense.” EU officials yesterday declined to disclose how much the event was costing.

In their hands they hold plastic bags filled with letters from German authorities and reminders from debt collection agencies, most of them unopened. "Why do Germans write so many letters?" asks one Bulgarian woman, shaking her head in disbelief as she stands in a long line outside the Verikom advice center in Hamburg. "In our village we didn't even have a mailman," she says.

To ease her frustration, she has sorted her baffling assortment of mail. Yellow envelopes are overdue payment notices and therefore dangerous. Letters bearing a heraldic eagle are from the state. Colored logos usually mean bills from telephone companies. Worlds have been colliding ever since increasing numbers of Bulgarians and Romanians began streaming into Germany. In many ways the authorities are just as overwhelmed by the often penniless European Union citizens as the immigrants themselves are by the realities of life in Germany.

This week, the Expert Council of German Foundations on Integration and Migration (SVR) will present its 2012 evaluation. The annual report, which analyzes collaboration on integration policy between national, regional and local authorities, comes to a sobering conclusion: Coordination is inadequate, while effective cooperation is largely non-existent.