The second the doorbell rings, the lights go off and the shades are drawn on the second floor of an apartment building on the outskirts of Athens. For the unwanted visitor, this is apparently meant to convey that no one is home. Since Nikos Kanellopoulos, 62, began appearing in the headlines, he is no longer available for comment.

Kanellopoulos is probably Greece's best-known public official at the moment. He was a civil servant for about 37 years, most recently as a department head in the Ministry of Culture. He went into retirement at the end of December 2008. He must have been very successful: According to the tax authorities, he now owns 10 properties, including the four-storey apartment building containing his own, 126-square meter (1,356-square foot) apartment in the suburb of Nikaia.

Tax investigators also discovered 11 personal banking accounts with four different banks. The grand total of all deposits made into the 11 accounts amounted to the stately sum of 8,923,506.58 euros (over $12 million). Of this amount, more than 8 million euros went into the accounts during Kanellopoulos's last 10 years as a civil servant. The question is, where did the money come from?

The Kanellopoulos case is seen as a particularly drastic example of the Greek malaise. It is making headlines at the moment because it contrasts so sharply with Prime Minister George Papandreou's massive efforts to fend off the national bankruptcy that still threatens Greece.

"The Holy See would consider such actions as grave violations of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience," Lombardi said in a statement. Catholics in China are divided between one Church that recognizes the pope and his authority to name bishops and a state-backed "patriotic association" which names its own bishops. Relations between the two had been seen to be improving, so Lombardi's tough statement was a surprise.

It said that Guo did not have the pope's approval to become bishop and that the Vatican would consider it "illicit and damaging to the constructive relations that have been developing in recent times between the People's Republic of China and the Holy See". The Vatican wants to establish diplomatic relations with China but Beijing says the Holy See must first sever ties with Taiwan, which China considers a renegade territory.

Taiwan, whose formal name is the Republic of China, has full diplomatic relations with only some 20 states.

The incident has raised fears that China may have harvested highly-sensitive information from re-routed emails. Another theory is that it could be testing a cyberweapon that could disrupt internet traffic from foreign servers. The traffic included email exchanges from websites of the US Senate and the Department of Defense, along with "many others" including NASA and Department of Commerce.

Chinese internet officials have claimed that the re-routing was accidental, but the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission's annual report suggested the hijacking could have been "malicious". "Evidence related to this incident does not clearly indicate whether it was perpetrated intentionally and, if so, to what ends," the report said. "However, computer security researchers have noted that the capability could enable severe malicious activities."

Larry Wortzel, a member of the commission, said yesterday: "We don't know what was done with the data when they got it. When I see things like this happen, I ask, who might be interested with all the communications traffic from the entire Department of Defense and federal government? It's probably not a graduate student at Shanghai University. What could you do if you had the stream of email traffic for 18 minutes to and from the US Joint Chiefs of Staff? Most importantly you would get the internet addresses of everybody that communicated."

While sensitive data such as emails are generally encrypted before being transmitted, the Chinese government holds a copy of an encryption master key which could be used it to break into redirected traffic.

A team of officials is due to arrive in the Republic later for further talks on the debt crisis. Representatives from the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the EU will take part. The talks will take place with the Dublin government, which has denied that it has asked for aid. The BBC's business editor Robert Peston said that in terms of Irish resistance to a bail-out, this was "game over".

"The Irish government could not conceivably go against the advice of its [eurozone] partners and its central bank," he said. Were it to do so, commercial customers of Irish banks would accelerate withdrawals which would be devastating, he said. BBC Ireland correspondent Mark Simpson added that it could be "a fortnight until we see what these loans look like".

Once known as the "Celtic tiger" because of the strength of its economic boom, the Republic has since suffered the deepest recession of any country in the developed world, including collapsing property prices and a deeply-indebted banking sector. The Irish government has repeatedly denied that it is seeking outside support. Prime Minister Brian Cowen has said that he has not asked for bail-out money and that the Irish economy is well funded until next year. An EU handout would be seen as a big loss of face for the Republic - essentially meaning that its survival and solvency was reliant on Brussels.

Financial experts from the European Commission and IMF are today expected to arrive in Dublin to begin discussions over a bailout for Irish banks which is set to be agreed in the coming days. The new figures - from the Bank for International Settlements - disclose that Britain faces the biggest potential losses from a meltdown in the Irish economy. This country's banks have lent more than those from any other country to the Irish government, consumers and businesses.

RBS, the largely-nationalised bank, is thought to have the biggest exposure with more than 50 billion pounds of outstanding loans. Amid the growing fears that an Irish collapse could have a serious knock-on effect in this country, Mr Osborne said that the Treasury was considering all options for financial aid.

"We are going to do what we regard as being in the British national interest: Ireland is our closest neighbour, so it is in our national interest that the Irish economy is successful and that the Irish banking system is stable," the Chancellor said. "Britain stands ready to support Ireland on the steps it needs to take to bring about that stability." He added: "I won't speculate on what kind of assistance we might provide. There are options, and we are looking at all of those".

On Tuesday, embattled Irish Finance Minister Brian Lenihan fended off pressure from other euro-zone member states to seek a bailout package from the stability fund established by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund earlier this year. Yet Dublin may not be able to hold out for much longer. The imminent arrival of IMF and EU experts in Dublin for what are being described as "short and focused discussions" starting on Thursday could see Ireland eventually tap into the fund, though on Tuesday night, following a meeting of euro-zone foreign ministers in Brussels, Lenihan was still insisting that such a bailout was "not inevitable."

Speaking to public broadcaster RTE on Wednesday morning, Lenihan said Ireland would accept EU support if the banking crisis was too big for the country to fix on its own. "Ireland is a small country and if the banking problems in the country are too big for this small country to manage, Europe is making it clear that they will help and help in every possible way to secure the system," Lenihan said.

Dublin's preferred option is to confine any rescue deal to help with the enormous costs of propping up the Irish banking sector, which has been practically demolished by huge losses incurred from the collapse of the real estate bubble. A wider bailout would be regarded as a humiliation for an already deeply unpopular government which, due to its wafer-thin majority, is unlikely to survive a full legislative period.

The fateful decision by Lenihan in 2008 to guarantee all deposits and debts in the Irish banking sector and the subsequent nationalization of three banks has already cost the state 45 billion euros ($61 billion) and pushed the nation's 2010 deficit to a staggering 32 percent of gross domestic product. The government has already slashed public spending and the country is braced for another tough budget on December 7, when a further 6 billion euros in tax hikes and public spending cuts are to be announced. In addition, the government is to present a four-year budgetary plan next week to Brussels.

"We are directing banks to maintain adequate reserves for potential losses and other contingencies and to make appropriate disclosures," Walsh said in prepared testimony released on Wednesday. The testimony is to be delivered to a House Financial Services subcommittee on Thursday. Federal Reserve Governor Elizabeth Duke, also in prepared testimony, said regulators' on-site review of major banks will be completed by the end of the year, and bank agencies will publicly release their findings in early 2011.

The Fed and other regulators are trying to understand the scope of the problem and potential impact to the economy, she said. "Delays and uncertainty resulting from flaws in the foreclosure process have the potential to delay recovery in housing markets and to undermine confidence in our financial and legal systems," Duke said. Banks are accused of having used "robo-signers" to sign hundreds of foreclosure documents a day without proper legal reviews, a fiasco that reignited public anger with banks that received billions of dollars in taxpayer aid during the financial crisis.

Duke said the Fed is also evaluating the potential macroeconomic effects of foreclosure documentation problems to the mortgage and housing markets. She said the Fed expects about 2.25 million foreclosure filings this year and again next year, and about 2 million more in 2012.

Because of the problems, he is ordering about 50 married church officials to delete their accounts with the social networking site or resign from their leadership positions. He had previously asked married congregants to share their login information with their spouses and now plans to suggest that they give up Facebook altogether. "I've been in extended counseling with couples with marital problems because of Facebook for the last year and a half," he said. "What happens is someone from yesterday surfaces, it leads to conversations and there have been physical meet-ups. The temptation is just too great."

On Sunday, he plans to "strongly suggest" that all married people to stop using Facebook, lest they endanger their marriage. "The advice will go to the entire church," he said. "They'll hear what I'm asking of my church leadership. I won't mandate it for the entire congregation, but I hope people will follow my advice."

About one in five adults uses Facebook for flirting, according to a 2008 report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. And a do-it-yourself divorce site in the United Kingdom, Divorce-Online, reported late last year that the word "Facebook" was appearing in about one in five of the petitions it was handling. Miller says there are legitimate uses for Facebook, which is why he started an account a few years ago. "People use it as an opportunity to invite others to social gatherings, to share Scripture or talk about what went on at church," he said. "Those are all positive, worthwhile things. But the downside is just too great."

The authorities must ensure that the cards contain no mention of the number 666, which in Greek Orthodox tradition is associated with the antichrist, the Church of Greece said in a statement. "In no way should the 'citizen card' contain the number 666, either in visible or invisible manner," the Holy Synod, governing council of the Church of Greece, said after a meeting between canon scholars, legal experts, computer specialists and government officials.

"The Church is obliged to protect personal freedom and defend the integrity of the faith," the Holy Synod added. State planners have pledged to take the observation on board, it said. The new cards are to be finalised early next year. The Church is officially part of the state in Greece. Frequently criticised as backward and superstitious by liberal circles, Orthodox custodians strongly adhere to tradition surrounding the number 666, which appears in the biblical Book of Revelation, believed to have been written by the Apostle John in the first century AD.

Also known as the figure of the Beast, the number has led ultra orthodox clerics to oppose the use of bar codes on goods, as well as electronic checks carried out under the border-free Schengen Area of which Greece is a member.

The warning by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation adds to fears about rising inflation in emerging countries from China to India. "Prices are dangerously close to the levels of 2007-08," said Abdolreza Abbassian, an economist at the FAO. The FAO painted a worrying outlook in its twice-yearly Food Outlook on Wednesday, warning that the world should "be prepared" for even higher prices next year.

It said it was crucial for farmers to "expand substantially" production, particularly of corn and wheat in 2011-12 to meet expected demand and rebuild world reserves. But the FAO said the production response may be limited as rising food prices had made other crops, from sugar to soyabean and cotton, attractive to grow. "This could limit individual crop production responses to levels that would be insufficient to alleviate market tightness. Against this backdrop, consumers may have little choice but to pay higher prices for their food," it said

The deepening debt crisis in Ireland which has spread to other parts of the eurozone has left the single currency and European Union fighting for their "survival", Herman Van Rompuy warned. "We are in a survival crisis," he told an audience of Brussels policymakers yesterday. "We all have to work together in order to survive with the euro zone because if we don't survive with the euro zone, we will not survive with the EU."

The comments helped spark a fall in share prices and the value of the euro across the world.

The way things are going, the facility will fail even before its wider fault lines have been fully exposed. Europe is making things up as it goes along, and a pretty desperate job it is making of it too. The extraordinary thing to outsiders trying to analyse these events is just how poorly prepared Europe was to cope with sovereign debt crises within its midst. Indeed the no bailout clause contained in the Maastricht Treaty seemed to deny the possibility of there ever being one.

Europe had wholly failed to plan for a hurricane of this sort - bizarre when you consider how meticulous the Germans are in their economic disciplines. As a result, the euro is left scrambling around looking for a plan. The European Financial Stability Facility plainly isn't it, for this only seems to condemn the surplus nations to repeatedly having to bailout the deficit economies. Eventually, that's going to be politically unacceptable. Perhaps it already is judging by Austria's actions. And even if it were acceptable, it doesn't work. For decades, Northern Italy has been bailing out the south with massive transfers of money.

It's done no good what so ever, with the gap between the rich north and poor south still as wide as ever. Fiscal transfers ultimately only succeed in entrenching the dependency culture.

European Union talks are famous for ending in last-minute breakthroughs during marathon negotiating sessions. But for once, late-night talks ended in deadlock as the EU failed to meet a deadline of midnight on Monday to reach an agreement over the bloc's budget for 2011. The breakdown in talks between representatives of the EU's 27 member states and the European Parliament means the EU is left for the time being without a budget for 2011. The whole budgetary procedure will have to start again from the beginning - a process that could take months.

"This is an unfortunate failure," said Alain Lamassoure, the chairman of the European Parliament's budget committee and the body's lead negotiator in the talks, in remarks to the German news agency DPA. "But there are still a few weeks until the end of the year." European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek said that the parliament "wanted a deal, but I regret that a few member states closed the door to the 2011 budget agreement." He described the breakdown in talks as "not good news."

If no agreement is reached by the end of the year, the EU will however be able to continue working in 2011 without a budget. Instead, it will operate on monthly payments calculated on the basis of the 2010 budget until the issue is resolved.

It is being described as a day of reckoning for Ireland. On Tuesday, European Union finance ministers are gathering in Brussels for their regular monthly meeting - and the first item on the agenda is sure to be the state of Dublin's finances. As worries over the country's debt have spread in the past week, the country has come under increasing pressure from the European Central Bank and other countries belonging to the European common currency zone to apply for aid from the 750 billion euros fund established earlier this year to prop up the euro. Ireland, however, continues to insist that, for the moment, no help is needed.

"I would hope after the (EU finance ministers' meeting) this afternoon and tomorrow there would be more logic introduced into this," Dick Roche, Ireland's European affairs minister, reiterated to BBC Radio on Tuesday morning. "There is no reason why we should trigger an IMF or an EU-type bailout." Roche did say that Irish banks did face serious liquidity problems. But, he added, "I don't think the appropriate response to that would be for the European finance ministers to panic."

British and German banks are certain to be watching the developments in Brussels closely. According to data provided by Germany's largest financial institutions in the summer as part of the Europe-wide banking stress tests, they hold some $138 billion in Irish debt, with Hypo Real Estate, the crippled German lender, leading the way with a portfolio worth 10.3 billion euros, according to a report in the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Tuesday. British banks have total holdings of Irish debt worth $150 billion.

As the barricades burned, the disease continued spreading across Haiti and potentially the island of Hispaniola. Authorities in the Dominican Republic reported their country's first confirmed case of cholera in Higuey, near the tourist mecca of Punta Cana. The man was a Haitian citizen who had recently returned from a 12-day vacation in neighboring Haiti. The news alarmed Dominicans, but the spread of the disease is easily prevented with good hygiene and sanitation, and no locally originated cholera cases have been reported.

Haiti's police chief, the health minister and other Cabinet officials headed to Cap-Haitien, the country's second largest city, where protesters erected barricades of flaming tires and other debris and clashed with UN troops. At least two demonstrators died, one of them shot by a member of the multinational peacekeeping force that has been trying to keep order since 2004. A UN World Food Program warehouse was looted and burned.

The cholera outbreak that began last month has brought increased misery to the entire country, still struggling with the aftermath of last January's earthquake. But anger has been particularly acute in the north, where the infection is newer, health care sparse and people have died at more than twice the rate of the region where the epidemic was first noticed.

The health ministry said Tuesday that the official death toll hit 1,034 as of Sunday. Figures are released following two days of review. Aid workers say the official numbers may understate the epidemic. While the ministry of health says more than 16,700 people have been hospitalized nationwide, Doctors Without Borders reports that its clinics alone have treated at least 16,500.