From Our Own Correspondent - 27/05/2010

The economic sickness that now threatens to destroy Europe's wealth. The Jews who put themselves on the side of the Palestinians. The lady with all the shoes, Imelda Marcos tells us what happened when she met China's Chairman Mao. And we go in the footsteps of Michaelangelo in the marble quarries of Tuscany. Europe is in trouble. Suddenly decades of steady enrichment seem to be at an end. Gone is the confident talk of prosperity through unity. Instead, the focus now is on the great financial crisis welling up on the union's southern fringe -- in Greece, Spain and elsewhere. A rising, spreading sea of debt threatens to drown the dreams of millions across the continent. Paul Mason reflects on the failings and falsehoods that have led Europe astray... If you're in Israel around the time of its annual independence day celebrations you can feel the pride in the air. The Israeli flag...blue and white, and with the Star of David...seems to fly from every lampost. The great majority of Israelis see their establishment of a state in hostile territory as an extraordinary triumph. But it isn't only the Palestinians who regard the birth of Israel as a disaster. As Jake Wallis Simons explains, there is a tiny group of Jews who also believe that it was wrong.... Think of the former first lady of the Philippines, Imelda Marcos, and you think...."shoes....and lots of them". She abandoned her vast collection of size eight-and-a-halves when she was forced to flee the presidential palace with her husband, Ferdinand, in 1986. For many, the shoe mountain symbolised the grotesque excesses of the ousted rulers. But Imelda is very much back. She's just won a seat in the Philippine Congress. And as Kate McGeown has been finding out, Mrs Marcos insists that when it comes to serving her people, an eye for fashionable shoes isn't all that she has to offer.... Suddenly Colombia's governing party is facing a major challenge. It had thought that it had Sunday's election wraped up. President Uribe's annointed successor, the former Defence Minister, Manuel Santos looked a certainty. He promises more of the same -- a continuation of the government's uncompromising approach towards drug smugglers and left-wing guerrillas. But the results in the days ahead may well reveal that Mr Santos has been forced into a second round by a maverick former-mayor of Bogota. Out on the campaign trail, Will Grant has been watching the challenger in action... Michaelangelo's work of genius, the statue of David in Florence, attracts more than a million visitors a year. The Biblical story of the young warrior's fight with the giant is set firmly in the Holy Land. But in one sense, Florence's David....is a local boy. He was carved from marble quarried from the hills of Tuscany. Michaelangelo liked to work in the famous stone of the Carrara region. And all these centuries on, it continues to produce the finest marble. But as Christine Finn explains, around the quarries of Carrara, the world is gradually changing....