Snuffed-out candles, skulls and hourglasses were how the Old Masters portrayed the vanity of greed. For the Dutch, the credit crunch has revived a moralistic stance from back when the first share was issued in Amsterdam.
Erupting on the 500th anniversary of the birth of Protestant theologian John Calvin, the financial crisis has spawned a splurge of puritanical debate and self-analysis.
Calvin's 16th-century teachings were influential for the Protestant Reformation in the Netherlands and across Europe, and as people reassess the forces that unleashed the global credit bubble, they are falling back on old truths.
Even Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende has turned to Calvin to explain the financial mess.
"If the credit crisis makes anything clear, it shows we need to strengthen the moral anchors of our economy," Mr Balkenende wrote in an article discussing what Calvin could teach us today.
"At its core this is also a moral crisis, caused by greed, money-mindedness and egoistic trading."
Crackdown on fake medical experts
China has banned actors and other "non-accredited personnel" from playing medical experts in advertisements for drugs after an internet-led witch-hunt exposed a number of bogus experts, state media reported yesterday.
A Chinese internet user late last month exposed 12 fake experts selling medicine under various guises and names on television stations in eastern Shandong province, sparking an online uproar over false endorsements. China's fair trade watchdog, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) vowed punishments after local hospitals and universities queued up to deny any affiliation to the "experts".
Chinese police earlier this month arrested at least five people in connection with a fake diabetic drug linked to the deaths of at least two people and sold in the thousands in several provinces.
Israel honours officer from The Pianist
Israel's Holocaust memorial said yesterday it was honouring a German officer whose rescue of a Polish Jewish musician is documented by Roman Polanski's 2002 Hollywood film The Pianist.
The late Captain Wilm Hosenfeld is one of the few German World War II soldiers to win the title of "Righteous among the Nations", among some 22,000 people honoured for helping Jews avoid death in the Nazi Holocaust, in which six million perished. In a statement, the Yad Vashem museum said it had decided to honour Capt. Hosenfeld, played in the movie by the German-born actor Thomas Kretschmann, after verifying that he had no hand in war crimes despite a military role in the occupation of Warsaw.
Capt. Hosenfeld, stationed in the Nazi-occupied Polish capital from 1940 to 1944, helped to shelter and feed the pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman. He was captured by the Red Army near the end of the war and perished in a Soviet prison in 1952.
Teenagers held after London shooting
Police said they had arrested two teenage boys yesterday in connection with the double shooting of a 19 and 18-year-old in Neasden, northwest London, on Saturday night.
The 14 and 15-year-old boys were arrested at separate addresses in nearby Brent.
The victims were shot in the street in Blackbird Hill, Neasden. The men were treated at two separate London hospitals and are in a serious but stable condition, police said.
Ireland probes Russian oil spill
The Irish coast guard is investigating reports of an oil spill from Russian ships off the south coast of Ireland, a naval spokesman said yesterday.
Public broadcaster RTE quoted the Coast Guard as saying two Russian warships spilt up to 12 tonnes of oil into the sea 400 kilometres off the coast of Kerry on Ireland's southwestern coast.
The oil has spread to an area measuring four miles by four miles.
A naval spokesman confirmed Russian vessels were off the south coast of Ireland and that an Irish navy ship was also in the area.
Crisis sparks Moscow crime wave
Russia's deepening economic crisis has sparked a wave of violent crime in Moscow, the capital's chief prosecutor said yesterday.
Moscow Chief Prosecutor Yuri Syomin said there had been a spike in violent crime last month, which he linked to the economic crisis.
Murders rose 16 per cent in Moscow last month while fatal assaults soared 44 per cent, Mr Syomin said, adding that immigrants - who flocked to Moscow from former Soviet republics during the boom years to work on construction sites and in menial jobs - were responsible for a disproportionate share of the increase.