Political leaders in Athens were due to discuss an emergency government Wednesday to deal with a possible run on banks as it emerged Greeks withdrew almost $900 million in a single day, fearing their country could crash out of the euro currency by the end of the week.

An interim government would take the country through to new elections on June 17, triggered by the collapse on Tuesday of talks to form a coalition between winners of the inconclusive May 6 election.

Greeks are withdrawing euros from banks, apparently afraid of the prospect of rapid devaluation if the country leaves the European single currency and returns to the drachma.

President Karolos Papoulias warned of “great fear that could develop into a panic,” the minutes of Papoulias' negotiations with political leaders showed.

The minutes also reveal Papoulias was warned by George Provopoulos, head of the country’s central bank, that savers withdrew at least 700 million euros ($894 million) on Monday.

"Withdrawals and outflows by 4:00 p.m. when I called him exceeded 600 million euros and reached 700 million euros," the president said according to the minutes of the meeting. "He expects total outflows of about 800 million euros."

It is not known how much was withdrawn on Tuesday.

The political vacuum in Greece has hampered the country’s chances of making the budget cuts required by the European bailout deal. Without more austerity measures, the flow of bailout money will dry up, raising the prospect of a euro exit with all its wider ramifications.

The likelihood of a Greek exit from the euro – dubbed the "Grexit" by commentators – is now so high that even political leaders committed to avoid it admit preparations are under way.

Asked in an interview whether Greece could leave the euro zone, IMF director Christine Lagarde replied: "We certainly don't hope so, from the IMF point of view ... but we have to be technically prepared for anything".

Will there be a run on Greek banks?

A Twitter image shared by economics blogger Tyler Durden, posted on UK website Zero Hedge, showed what appeared to lines outside ATMs in Greece, although it was impossible to verify where the picture was taken or if lines were longer than normal.

Reuters reported early Wednesday that there has “so far been no sign” of lines at banks in Athens, despite the likelihood that an exit from the euro would see a dramatic devaluation in of Greek currency.

CNBC’s John Carney raised the prospect of reduced limits on ATM withdrawals, citing a calculation by London analysts Capital Economics that if every working-age Greek withdrew the maximum permitted ATM amount of 300 euros a day, every single deposit of Greek households would be gone within 61 days.

“So the controls put in place in advance of an exit from the euro would have to include not only limits on moving funds abroad, but limiting withdrawals from ATMs and possibly declaring a bank holiday,” Carney wrote.

In practice, however, any Greeks lucky enough to possess any savings have already taken the precaution of withdrawing them from banks.

“Over the last two years Greeks withdrew approximately 70 billion euros from their bank accounts, an amount equivalent to approximately 35 percent of Greek GDP,” Dr Michael Arghyrou, senior economics lecturer at Cardiff Business School in Wales told msnbc.com.

“This is a negative demand shock of enormous proportions and with increased uncertainty this trend will almost certainly accelerate. So yes, we will almost certainly see more deposits withdrawals over the next few days, I just hope is that they will not be so large as to lead to a full-blown bank run.”

How likely is ‘Grexit’? Are drachma notes being printed?

A year ago, it was nearly impossible to get officials and political leaders to talk about the possibility of Greece leaving the eurozone. Now it appears to be an open secret.

Ireland's central bank chief and European Central Bank policymaker, Patrick Honohan, signaled on Sunday that a Greek exit might not be as painful as previously thought.

Yorgos Karahalis / Reuters

A man makes his way past a replica of a one drachma coin outside the Athens Town Hall May 15, 2012.

"Technically, it can be managed," he told reporters. "It would be a knock to the confidence for the euro area as a whole ... It is not necessarily fatal, but it is not attractive."

The tone from the European Commission, the EU's executive, has shifted too.

On Monday, spokeswoman Pia Ahrenhilde-Hansen said: “We wish Greece will remain in the euro and we hope Greece will remain in the euro ... but it must respect its commitments. Greece has its future in its own hands and it is really up to Greece to see what the response should be.”

Asked about contingencies, she did not rule them out.

"There are many, many questions arising and many questions open about Greece and most answers have to come from Greece and we have to respect the ongoing political process. Clearly, the future of Greece is in the eurozone. We are working on that."

However, the official response remains that a Greek exit is not being considered. Richard Corbett, a senior adviser to European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, told BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday: "We're not planning for a Greek exit, nobody is planning for a Greek exit."

Some commentators have pointed to a 13 percent rise in the share value of British firm De La Rue, which is the world’s largest currency printer, amid speculation it is best placed to pick up the contract for printing new versions of the drachma, the Greek currency phased out in 2002.

It has remained tight-lipped on whether it is working for the Greek government, but in the meantime an interim solution has been mooted in which existing euro notes would be converted into drachmas by being endorsed by an official stamp.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Angelika Warmuth / AFP - Getty Images, file

This combination of photos shows members of Germany's Pirate Party who attended a two-day conference in Neumuenster on April 28.

MAINZ, Germany -- The Pirate Party boarded another ship this week, so to speak, as the upstarts' voyage into German politics startled mainstream rivals.

Their treasure? Nearly 8 percent of the votes in a local election in the country's most populous state and their fourth consecutive entry into a German local state parliament.

"We have written history today, now it is time to party, politics should be fun," said Michele Marsching, head of the local state chapter in Northrhein-Westphalia. 

The Pirate Party has based its political agenda mainly on Internet freedom and political transparency. It promotes what it calls "liquid feedback," which involves members making suggestions online. They are discussed in chat rooms before entering the party's internal policy-making process.

Despite, or perhaps because of this unconventional approach, the Pirate Party surprised the country's long-established parties by gaining a reputable 7.8 percent of the vote on Sunday. Meanwhile, Chancellor Angela Merkel's party – the Christian Democrats – had to cope with a huge defeat in Northrhein-Westphalia.

'Learning by doing'
But who are the Pirates? A mostly young motley crew of hip intellectuals and bandana-wearing cyber-politicians, they have openly admitted that they are still "learning by doing" after every new election success.

The Pirates emerged in Sweden six years ago, where they started by campaigning on free downloads for personal use and Internet privacy issues. Germany's Pirate Party now has approximately 30,000 members.

"The party consists of mostly liberal leftists, who have some typical socialist views. But most important is that they promote a new form of politics," Professor Jürgen Falter, a political scientist at the University of Mainz, told NBC News.

Falter says that he has spent hours combing through the Pirates' program, but admits that he had difficulties finding a clear political line in their manifesto.

"Some of the propositions would even require a fundamental change of German laws and a total rethinking of existing party oligarchies," Falter said.

A retired teacher's courageous crusade: Tackling neo-Nazi hate

In fact, some political demands seem rather anarchical: the Pirates are calling for ticket-free public transportation in German cities, funded (as one of many online proposals suggested by members) by tax money. Another demand is the basic income guarantee for all Germans.

However, the party still has difficulties explaining how these projects would be paid for.

'No defined finish line'
What happens, for example, if a foreign tourist needs a bus ticket? No answer yet -- decision-making in progress, the Pirates say.

"Political experts always ask when we are ready to present our program, when we can define all of our goals," says 31-year-old Markus Barenhoff, the deputy chairman of the Pirate Party. "But for us, there is no defined finish line, politics and political decisions are a continuing development process."

Germany's influential Der Spiegel weekly news magazine recently dedicated its cover to Germany's fledgling party and described the young politicians as "amateurs," calling the Pirates' political quest a "grand experiment."

Der Spiegel

Der Spiegel's article portrayed the Pirates as "a party of computer nerds and freaks, a party of political neophytes, electrifying a large share of German citizens."

The Pirates' popularity seems to be the result of a growing political mistrust and disappointment with traditional politicians.

Many analysts in Germany say the Pirates are drawing support from across the political spectrum due to a growing "disenchantment with politics" across Europe.

"Thanks to their fresh anti-establishment attitude they are attracting many new voters, who in the past stayed away from the polls," Falter added. "But they also capture the so-called protest votes, people who are frustrated with conventional politics.

"The Pirates are somewhat naive politicians, but they are democrats, and their success is far better than seeing gains for extremist parties from the Far Left or the Far Right."

3 arrested as Germany cracks down on neo-Nazi extremists

The Pirates' fairytale is reminiscent of the rise of Germany's Green party, which was regarded as little more than a group of radical ecologists when the party appeared on the political landscape 30 years ago. Today, the Greens are a respected "political pillar" and have been part of ruling coalitions.

But while the Greens had a clear political message from the start, the Pirates are still in search of their exact stand on important issues such as the eurozone crisis or defense and security policies.

"We are truly different," says Barenhoff, an IT specialist. "Our focus is set more on political methods than on political content."

Tobias M. Eckrich / Courtesy Pirate Party

Markus Barenhoff is the deputy chairman of Germany's Pirate Party.

If the Pirates do manage to become a permanent player in German parliaments, they could make it tougher for the country's large parties to form majorities. A federal election looms in September 2013. 

The Pirates are cautious about whether their current success is sustainable and if it will allow them to gain seats in the Bundestag, Germany's lower house of parliament, next year.

"I believe that we have very good chances to enter the German parliament in 2013, but knowing how rapid things can change in politics, I do not want to give a prognosis for the long term," says Barenhoff. "We are working on the here and now."

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Toussaint Kluiters / Pool via Reuters

Former Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic sits in a courtroom in The Hague on Wednesday as his trial opens. Mladic, 70, faces 11 overall counts for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Updated at 4:57 a.m.: THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic went on trial for genocide on Wednesday, accused of leading the slaughter of 8,000 unarmed Muslim boys and men in Srebrenica in 1995, Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.

The ailing 70-year-old Mladic's appearance at the U.N. tribunal for the former Yugoslavia marks the end of a long wait for justice to survivors of the 1992-95 war that left some 100,000 people dead. He is accused of 11 charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Mladic, in a suit and tie and looking healthier than at previous pretrial hearings, gave a thumbs-up and clapped to supporters in the court's public gallery as the trial got under way. He occasionally wrote notes and showed no emotion as prosecutors began outlining his alleged crimes.

One woman in the public gallery called him a "vulture" as prosecutors began two days of laying out their case for judges.

Presiding Judge Alphons Orie of the Netherlands said at the outset that the court was considering postponing the presentation of evidence, due to start May 29, due to "errors" by prosecutors in disclosing evidence to the defense. Prosecutor Dermot Groome said he would not oppose a "reasonable adjournment."

Mladic allegedly orchestrated not only the week-long massacre in Srebrenica, at the time a U.N. "safe haven", but also the 43-month siege of Sarajevo, in which more than 10,000 people were killed by snipers, machineguns and heavy artillery.

Munira Subasic, who lost 22 family members in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, was among a group of relatives of war dead heading into the courtroom to face Mladic.

The 65-year-old said she wanted to look him in the eye "and ask him if he will repent for what he did."

'Murderer!'
Mladic, who was arrested last May after 16 years on the run, has dismissed the charges as "monstrous" and says he is too ill to stand trial. The court entered a "not guilty" plea on his behalf.

The case has inevitably stirred up violent emotions in the Balkans. Survivors watching proceedings from the court gallery have shouted "Murderer!" and "Killer!" at a man nicknamed the "Butcher of Bosnia."

Slideshow: The charges against Ratko Mladic

Serge Ligtenberg / Getty Images

A career soldier, Mladic stands accused of orchestrating the siege of Sarajevo and the slaughter of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica.

Launch slideshow

For his part, Mladic has been angry and defiant during pre-trial hearings, heckling the judge, shouting and interrupting the proceedings.

"The whole world knows who I am," he told a hearing last year. "I am General Ratko Mladic. I defended my people, my country ... now I am defending myself."

Mladic was in charge of the Bosnian Serb army when, over several days in July 1995, Serb fighters overran the Srebrenica enclave in eastern Bosnia, theoretically under the protection of Dutch U.N. peacekeepers.

Srebrenica: The story that will never end

Video footage shot at the time showed Mladic mingling with Muslim prisoners.

Shortly afterwards, the men and boys were separated from the women, stripped of identification, and shot.

The dead were bulldozed into mass graves, then later dug up with excavators and hauled away in trucks to be better hidden from the world, in dozens of remote mass graves.

Prosecutors say Mladic was part of a "joint criminal enterprise to eliminate the Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica by killing the men and boys ... and forcibly removing the women, young children and some elderly men".

Mladic is also held responsible for the siege and bombardment of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, which prosecutors said was intended to "spread terror among the civilian population."

The horrors of the siege, together with the Srebrenica massacre, eventually galvanized world opinion in support of the campaign of Western airstrikes on Bosnian Serb targets that brought the conflict to an end shortly after.

Mladic was indicted in 1995 along with Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serbs' political leader.

Yet both remained free in Serbia for more than a decade before being tracked down and sent to The Hague. Karadzic's trial is already under way.

Defense lawyers say they have not had enough time to review the huge case file prepared by prosecutors and asked for the trial to be postponed, but the request was denied.

411 witnesses
Serge Brammertz, the court's chief prosecutor, has dismissed Mladic's assertion that he is too frail to sit through a 200-hour prosecution case involving testimony from 411 witnesses.

His appearance in The Hague is testament to the work of the tribunal, which has defied skeptics by managing, in the course of 19 years, to arrest all its 161 indictees.

But some victims still fear that Mladic, who has received physical therapy for a possible stroke, could escape judgment by dying in mid-trial.

Mladic's mentor, former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, the architect of the Balkan wars, died in detention in 2006, a few months before a verdict in his trial for genocide and other war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Courtesy Liz Thomas

Will Evans, a Canadian who teaches English in China, is seen in his classroom.

 
BEIJING – Speak a little English and are willing to relocate? Well, you’re probably qualified to be an English-language instructor in China. 

As long as you are white, that is.

Chinese teaching agencies are constantly seeking candidates to teach English to the growing number of children who are looking to get a leg up in China’s rigorous academic environment. The opportunity is quite lucrative and requires little or no knowledge of Chinese. 

But the ads recruiting these teachers come with a catch.

Take, for example, Mike Lee and Will Evans, students from the U.S. and Canada, respectively, who applied to be English teachers through the New Development School, a teacher-placement agency in Beijing. Being fluent speakers of English, both believed they would make competitive candidates. 

What they didn’t know is that recruiters would not be evaluating them just on their English fluency or academic credentials. Instead, they were judged primarily on physical appearance. 

“We want him [pointing to Evans], but we don’t want you [to Lee],” the recruiter told them, as the two stood side by side at the front counter of the school. “Unfortunately, parents of our students don’t really want someone Asian to be teaching.”

Lee, who is Korean-American, was rejected from the school despite having previous experience teaching English as a second language (ESL). Evans, a white Canadian, was hired on the spot. 

“I was shocked – back home this wouldn’t be acceptable,” Lee told NBC News. “I’ve never been discriminated (against) in that way.” 

White, Caucasians only
Racial discrimination is a harsh reality within China’s ESL industry, where recruiters actively seek the blond-hair, blue-eyed all-American archetype (along with similarly equipped Britons, Australians and other native speakers close behind). While brown hair also is acceptable, having a white face is a near-absolute requirement. 

Courtesy Liz Thomas

Will Evans, a Canadian who teaches English in China, is seen in his classroom.

Byron Vogue, who works for the corporate English training company Stanford English, said that Chinese recruiters will always prefer to hire Caucasian applicants over their non-white counterparts.

“There’s this concept that if you send your children to English class, the parents are expecting their children to be taught by a white English teacher versus an Asian-American or … a black American,” he said. 

A post by Vogue on a popular online forum and classifieds site, The Beijinger, explicitly spells out the phenomenon:

“In Beijing this is the general pecking order in terms of a company's recruitment (by Chinese managers):

1. White Americans/Canadians

2. White British

3. White Australians/New Zealanders and South Africans

4. European Nonnatives/Black Americans/Black British

5. American Asians/Black Aussies (Australians) and Kiwis (New Zealanders)/Filipinos/Africans”

The discrimination comes, Evans said, because Chinese parents simply do not believe a non-white person can possibly be a native speaker. Thus, this logic continues, hiring a white person is the simplest and easiest way to ensure that the teacher is truly fluent.

“I was told that it was nice for parents to see foreign or white-looking teachers around the school,” Evans said, adding that he was encouraged to walk outside and greet parents. 

Advertisements for English teaching positions are up-front in their bias. A search for “English teacher” in The Beijinger’s classifieds section reveals dozens of ads that include language such as “Job requires American or Canadian white teacher” or “white color is preferred.”

The ESL teaching industry isn’t the only job market in China where being Caucasian is an asset. So-called “face jobs,” where companies temporarily hire a white person to be a fake employee during an important event or business meeting, also are common in China. 

Wanna sell something in China? Hire a white guy

‘Makes you feel like crap’

The preference for Caucasian employees angers many Asian-Americans and other English-speaking ethnic Asians.

“It makes you feel like crap,” said Lee. “We all came here on the same boat, at the same time, looking for the same opportunity. I didn’t know the color of my skin was going to be an issue. I find it weird to be discriminated against for being Asian, while I’m in Asia.”