The euro crisis: Europe's Achilles heel

Amid growing risk of a Greek exit, the euro zone has yet to face up to the task of saving the single currency itself

The respite in the euro crisis lasted a few short months. Now, despite a €130 billion ($169 billion) second bail out for Greece, a fiscal compact agreed on by the euro zone leaders in December, and €1 trillion of cheap long-term loans from the European Central Bank, the night terrors are back. How dispiriting that Europe is still so ill-prepared for the ordeal to come.

Time is short. In France voters have given their new president, François Hollande, a mandate to alter the "austere" course set by his ousted predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Angela Merkel, Germany's chancellor, and to focus on growth. Mrs Merkel says she will not change the fiscal compact, but Mr Hollande needs something to show voters in legislative polls next month. More threatening is the second election looming in Greece, where parties are struggling to form a government. If a majority of Greeks again vote to reject the spending cuts and reforms that go with their country's bail-out, then euro-zone governments-in particular, Germany's-will face a drastic choice. Mrs Merkel will either accommodate Greece and swallow the moral hazard of rewarding defiance or, more likely, stand firm and cut the Greeks adrift.

The idea of a chaotic Greek departure from the euro at a time of Franco-German disunion should terrify everyone it touches (the damage it would do the world economy may well be the biggest risk to Barack Obama's chances of re-election, for instance). With so much at stake, the rest of the euro zone urgently needs to lower the risk that contagion from a Greek exit would infect Portugal, Ireland and even Spain and Italy. The worry is that, just at the moment when hardheaded realpolitik is needed, politics has fallen prey to self-delusion, with leaders in all the main countries peddling seductive half-truths that promise Europe's citizens an easier way out.

'No progress' on China dissident Chen Guangcheng's passport

The blind Chinese dissident who escaped from house arrest and hid in the US embassy has said there is no progress on his passport application.

When the dissident, Chen Guangcheng, left the embassy China promised him he could apply to study abroad.

But more than a week later Chen told the BBC there was no movement.

He said no Chinese officials had visited him in recent days, there had been no forms to fill in and no photograph had been taken. The agreement that Chen would be able to study in the US provided a way of diffusing the diplomatic spat caused by the incident.

He was offered a place to study law at New York University and the US formalities appear to have been completed. Chen spoke to the BBC from the hospital where he is now confined, under Chinese guard.

"I haven't heard anything," he said, "Chinese authorities promised they would help, but I don't know if they will."

He added that no US diplomats have visited him in recent days either - although an embassy doctor and translator saw him a week ago.

He repeated concerns about the treatment of his family and accused officials in his home village of taking "crazy revenge" on them.

Chen is still being treated in hospital for a leg injury he sustained during his escape.

Protest in Philippines over South China Sea stand-off

Several hundred protesters waved flags and placards at the Chinese embassy in Manila, calling for China to withdraw its ships from a South China Sea shoal.

The Philippines deployed more than 100 police near the Chinese Consular Office, said local media, amid rising tension over the month-long row. The two countries have been locked in a stand-off in disputed waters at the Scarborough Shoal since 8 April.

Both sides accuse each other of intruding into territorial waters. "Our protest is directed at the overbearing actions and stance of the government in Beijing, which behaves like an arrogant overlord, even in the homes of its neighbours," rally organiser Loida Nicholas Lewis was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.

The row began early last month when the Philippines said its naval ship had found eight Chinese fishing vessels at the shoal, which both sides claim.

Protesters sang the Philippine national anthem, and carried placards that read: "China stop bullying the Philippines", "Make Peace Not War", and "China: Scarborough Shoal Today, Tomorrow the World?"

One of the organisers seized a microphone and compared the Philippine-China row to a fight between David and Goliath. 'David won': she shouted triumphantly to much applause.

But in reality at least militarily this David has little hope against China's Goliath. The protesters say that if China won't back down, an international tribunal should decide who owns the Scarborough Shoal.