In its fight to influence animal welfare policies on food products - including how chickens are slaughtered and how pigs are kept - Peta has changed tactics. By buying stock in companies, Peta is guaranteed the right to present its ideas directly to officials and other shareholders, many of whom might otherwise pay little attention to the group.

"It gives us a new forum in which to present the research we've done to company executives, their shareholders and the public," said Ashley Byrne, a senior campaigner for Peta. She claimed the tactic was proving successful. In many cases, shareholders were "horrified" when they learned of some of the production methods used by their companies' suppliers, Ms Byrne said.

She said companies such as the Safeway grocery store chain and Ruby Tuesday restaurants in the US had agreed to buy products from companies that practised more humane slaughter methods or supplied free range eggs and pork. Meridith Hammond, a spokesman for Ruby Tuesday, said the company was "pleased to cooperate with Peta and grateful for their advice, help with resources, and information about suppliers." Kraft Foods would not comment on Peta, but said all shareholders were free to express their opinions to management and the board.

European leaders have rejected a proposal by Hungary that a 169 billion pounds rescue fund be set up to help poorer eastern European nations through the economic downturn. "The EU nations seem to be taking very much a nationalistic approach and that's obviously going to be a big negative," said Ian Stannard, currency strategist at BNP Paribas in London. "We would certainly be looking for the euro to come under further pressure."

The pound may also drop further against the dollar as a result of the crisis in some eastern European economies, Mr Stannard said, because large British and European banks were among the biggest lenders to the region during the boom years. The dollar has enjoyed a strong run in recent months because of a flight to safety by investors, and that is likely to continue as emerging markets increasingly feel the pain of the global slowdown.

Hungary has warned Europe could be split by a "new iron curtain" if the economic crisis is allowed to separate east and west. Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany said there could be a flood of immigrants into western Europe, social unrest and defaults on loans made by western European banks if nothing is done by wealthier EU nations to help central and eastern European states.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, in a nationally televised address, said he would take the issue to the UN Security Council, whose past sanctions are already sapping what little energy North Korea's communist economy has left. The United States, which has 28,000 troops on the peninsula, threw its full support behind South Korea and said it was working hard to stop the situation from worsening.

"North Korea's goal is to instigate division and conflict," said Lee, speaking from the country's war memorial in Seoul. "It is now time for the North Korean regime to change." Analysts say China's leaders fear that if North Korea's government falls, it will send chaos across into its territory and lead to US troops moving right to its border.

China, Australia and the 15 other largest mining nations averaged weekly output of 41.6 tons last year, researcher GFMS Ltd estimates. Even though prices have fallen 4.6 percent to $1,191.65 from a record $1,249.40 an ounce May 14, the median in a Bloomberg survey of 23 traders, analysts and investors shows it will reach $1,500 by the end of the year.

Buying accelerated as the MSCI World Index of 23 developed nations' stocks tumbled as much as 16 percent since mid-April and the euro weakened to a four-year low against the dollar. Holders of ETPs, including George Soros and John Paulson, accumulated a record 1,938 tons by May 21, eclipsing all but four of the biggest central-bank holdings.

"You could see gold go up another $1,000," said Evan Smith, who helps manage $2 billion at US Global Investors Inc in San Antonio and in 2006 correctly predicted that gold would reach $700 within two years. "All of the turmoil and problems we've seen in Europe is just another reminder that there's a lot of value in gold as a safe haven."

"People are afraid of the debasement of all the currencies," said Peter Schiff, president and chief global strategist for Darien, Connecticut-based Euro Pacific Capital, whose clients have more than $2 billion in assets. "What's surprising is that gold is still as low as it is," he said, predicting $5,000 to $10,000 an ounce in the next five to 10 years.

"The second half of this year will likely show very anemic growth on a global basis," he said. "The crisis in Greece is going to spread to Spain and it's going to be very difficult to deal with. They are bailing out debt with more debt and it isn't sustainable. It's a wonderful scenario for gold."

Last week, Spain's government passed austerity measures to cut its deficit. This deficit - the money the administration has to borrow to pay for public services due to insufficient tax returns and other revenues - currently equates to 11% of Spain's economic output.

This is substantially higher than the eurozone ceiling of 3% and another concern that the IMF has highlighted. It also pointed to Spain's property market slump, heavy indebtedness in the private sector, and weak productivity and competitiveness.

"It is not the first time that the IMF has said Spain needs economic reform, but the language has a much greater sense of urgency," said BBC economics correspondent Andrew Walker. "The IMF says bluntly, the Spanish labour market is not working and needs reform of pay bargaining and lower payments for fired workers."

If one or more fail to make the expected progress on cutting budgets, restructuring economies or boosting growth, it could drain confidence in a broad and unsettling way. Credit markets worldwide could lock up and throw the global economy back into recession. For the average American, that seemingly distant sequence of events could translate into another hit on the 401(k) plan, a lost factory shift if exports to Europe decline and another shock to the banking system that might make it harder to borrow.

"If what happened in Greece were to happen in a large country, it could fundamentally mark our times," Angelos Pangratis, head of the European Union delegation to the United States, said Friday after a panel discussion on the crisis in Greece sponsored by the Greater Washington Board of Trade. That local economic development boards are sponsoring panels on government debt in Greece is perhaps proof enough that Europe's problems are the world's. That the dominoes can tumble fast was shown Thursday when a new and narrowly drawn stock-trading policy in Germany helped trigger a sell-off on Wall Street.

The most vulnerable European countries - Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland - may represent only about 4 percent of world economic activity, but "the debt crisis and its ripple effects are bad news for all corners of the world," said Cornell University economist Eswar Prasad.

These seven deadly domestic problems have three things in common. First, inept politicians and bureaucrats have consistently worked on the wrong problem. They have put political agendas and political pandering ahead of what's best for the people.

Much has been written about the fact that we do not have a health-care crisis in America; we have a health-care cost crisis. The recently passed health-care deform legislation does not address the real problem, nor will it bring down the deficit as we have been falsely told. The right steps to solve the right problem have also been written about extensively, but those steps would get in the way of the all-out power grab we are seeing from this administration and the Democrats in Congress.

Congress is about to pass financial reform legislation, which will also be another "deform" bill because it establishes another unneeded oversight bureaucracy to oversee all financial institutions, except Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. One would think that the two entities that were the catalyst for the financial meltdown more than a year ago would be included in any so-called reform legislation even if the new bureaucracy is un-needed. But we are not supposed to think.

Secondly, these same politicians provide lip service to the least informed voters who usually continue to re-elect them, while they let the problems grow for decades. The Social Security and Medicare systems are in desperate need of modernization. This could start with the novel idea of just using payroll taxes for their originally intended purpose of providing benefits, but legislation introduced by Senator Tom Coburn a few years ago to do that failed with 85 votes against.

And thirdly, we know how to solve all of these problems, but we do not have the leadership or political courage in Washington, DC, to solve them. Instead, problems go unsolved, or we get incremental band-aids and, worse yet, more problems are created. The exponential increase in the national debt is simply irresponsibility on steroids! Collectively, these seven deadly unsolved problems have us headed for the same type of economic and social turmoil we are seeing in Greece. It's just a matter of time, and there is no "sugar daddy" to bail Uncle Sam out.

State and local government are frantically scrambling to meet budget shortfalls as high unemployment and shaky consumer confidence mean less income tax and smaller sales tax revenue for government coffers. At the same time, falling home prices and rising foreclosures will start to hit municipalities hard this year as all those property reassessments done over the past 18 months kick in.

A couple of municipalities, such as Los Angeles and Detroit, have even whispered the "B" word. Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan argued in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal earlier this month that the city will likely have little choice but to declare bankruptcy between now and 2014. Also, several smaller markets, such as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Jefferson County, Alabama, have openly talked about filing for Chapter 9 bankruptcy - a reorganization available only to municipalities.

Market experts say they're keeping a particularly sharp eye on Detroit and Los Angeles, as well as markets that were hit hard by the boom-and-bust housing meltdown, such as Las Vegas, Phoenix, Miami, Jacksonville, Orlando and Orange County. Cohen says many investors believe that if such a doom-and-gloom scenario becomes reality, the federal government will step in. "I think there is a complacency mentality that if something big happens, well, the government will bail us out," says Cohen.

Greece has been saved and the euro stabilized. Both undertakings were vital - and the right thing to do. But the two packages - the first worth 110 billion euros and the second valued at 750 billion euros - have also spread a feeling of unease. Experts have voiced doubts as to the packages' efficiency, politicians have become pensive and the public is downright concerned. Indeed, some have even gone so far as to begin doubting the validity of the European project in its entirety.

But the crisis has presented us with an opportunity as well - and it is one that politicians must not let pass them by. It is time for the European Union to be established anew - we need a new foundation and a new justification. Otherwise, European integration, which has progressed so rapidly in recent years, could come to a screeching halt, or even be reversed. For far too long, the project has been in the hands of the elites and the diplomats - the public has largely been shut out.

When the European Union was founded, Europeans were full of idealism and enthusiasm as they fought for a peaceful, united continent. What remains of this fascination? Not enough, unfortunately.

"A state of public emergency, limited to the parishes of Kingston and St Andrew, has been declared and will come into effect at 6:00 pm (2300 GMT) today," the government's Jamaica Information Service (JIS) said. The limited emergency in the popular Caribbean tourist destination covered districts of the capital where gunmen on Sunday fired on two police stations and set fire to another. At least one policemen was injured.

The attackers were suspected supporters of Christopher "Dudus" Coke whom the government has called on to surrender to face a US extradition request on cocaine trafficking and gun-running charges. Streets into the poor Tivoli Gardens area of West Kingston, where Coke is believed to be hiding, were barricaded on Sunday in defiance of a police call for Coke to hand himself over, witnesses said.

The US Department of State has issued a travel alert warning its citizens of the possibility of violence in Jamaica's Kingston Metropolitan area. Tensions in Jamaica rose over the last week after Prime Minister Bruce Golding announced he was starting proceedings to extradite Coke. US prosecutors describe Coke as the leader of the infamous "Shower Posse" that murdered hundreds of people during the cocaine wars of the 1980s.

The newly promoted four-star general, Keith Alexander, takes charge of the Pentagon's ambitious and controversial new Cyber Command, designed to conduct virtual combat across the world's computer networks. He was appointed on Friday afternoon in a low-key ceremony at Fort Meade, in Maryland. The creation of America's most senior cyber warrior comes just days after the US air force disclosed that some 30,000 of its troops had been re-assigned from technical support "to the frontlines of cyber warfare".

The creation of Cyber Command is in response to increasing anxiety over the vulnerability of the US's military and other networks to a cyber attack. James Miller, the deputy under-secretary of defence for policy, has hinted that the US might consider a conventional military response to certain kinds of online attack.

Now the welfare state - cherished by many Europeans as an alternative to what they see as dog-eat-dog American capitalism - is coming under its most serious threat in decades: Europe's sovereign debt crisis. Deep budget cuts are under way across Europe. Although the first round is focused mostly on government payrolls - the least politically explosive target - welfare benefits are looking increasingly vulnerable.

"The current welfare state is unaffordable," said Uri Dadush, director of the Carnegie Endowment's International Economics Program. "The crisis has made the day of reckoning closer by several years in virtually all the industrial countries."

Germany will decide next month just how to cut at least 3 billion euros ($3.75 billion) from the budget. The government is suggesting for the first time that it could make fresh cuts to unemployment benefits that include giving Germans under 50 about 60 percent of their last salary before taxes for up to a year. That benefit itself emerged after cuts to an even more generous package about five years ago.

Mr Salazar is due to visit the disaster site on Monday with other officials. The oil leak began more than a month ago, when a drilling rig operated on behalf of BP exploded, killing 11 people. Tens of thousands of barrels of oil have spewed into the ocean since then from the well's ruptured riser pipe, 1,524 metres (5,000 feet) beneath the surface. The spill has reached Louisiana and is threatening Florida and Cuba.

"If we find they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, we'll push them out of the way appropriately," Mr Salazar told reporters after visiting BP's US headquarters. The BBC's Madeleine Morris in Washington says Mr Salazar's comment is the strongest language yet used by a US official towards BP. Although it is within the government's power to push BP aside, our correspondent says BP is the only organisation with the knowledge to deal with a situation like this at such a depth.

Washington is coming under increasing criticism for its response to the disaster, as well as pressure to assume control from BP.

North Korea's main newspaper called the investigation an "intolerable, grave provocation". The White House endorsed the South's move, and pledged its co-operation "to deter future aggression". Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has urged China to co-operate with the US on North Korea. Mrs Clinton told a US-China summit in Beijing that Pyongyang must be held to account for the attack on the Cheonan.

"We ask North Korea to stop its provocative behaviour... and comply with international law," she added. China is North Korea's closest trading partner and has in the past been reluctant to take tough measures against the communist state. The North depends on South Korea and China for up to 80% of its external trade and 35% of its GDP. In 2009, inter-Korean trade stood at $1.68 billion (1.11 billion pounds) - 13% of the North's GDP.

In a strongly worded televised address, Mr Lee said that the South was forgetting that it shared a border "with one of the most war-mongering nations on Earth. From now on, the Republic of Korea will not tolerate any provocative act by the North and will maintain a principle of proactive deterrence," the president said. "If our territorial waters, airspace or territory are militarily violated, we will immediately exercise our right of self-defence."

Poor loan performance in other sectors also continued to hurt banks, with the total number of loans at least three months past due climbing for the 16th consecutive quarter, FDIC officials said in a briefing on Thursday. "The banking system still has many problems to work through, and we cannot ignore the possibility of more financial market volatility," FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair said.