The European Commission president said: "Economically, we see the end of Europe's glorious years compared with what others are doing." Mr Juncker also blasted national leaders for threatening the "love affair" of integration because they "do not love" each other enough. He said: "The European Union is not going very well. And so we must ensure that we keep alive the ambitions, hopes and dreams of Europe."

The EU will soon represent just 15 per cent of worldwide gross domestic product as other countries enjoy economic growth, according to recent projections. And David Cameron recently urged Britain to grab opportunities to trade with Asian markets instead of relying on fellow EU member states. He said: "For too long, Britain has seen the weather-vane pointing to these far-flung lands, but continued to rely on our European neighbours for trade and investment."

But Mr Juncker claimed the problems faced by Brussels underline the need for member states to "stay together". Speaking in Madrid, Juncker said: "The time has not arrived for us to redivide the national leagues and classes."

"It's always difficult to play a double game: declaring a fight against terrorists while simultaneously trying to use some of them to arrange the pieces on the Middle East chess board in one's own interests," Putin said at a meeting of political scientists known as the Valdai Club.

"It is impossible to prevail over terrorism if some of the terrorists are being used as a battering ram to overthrow undesirable regimes," Putin said. Russia has insisted the air strikes it has conducted since September 30 in the war-torn country are hitting IS and other "terrorist" groups. But the US and its allies, who are conducting a separate bombing campaign, say Moscow's strikes are aimed at Western-backed moderate rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

"There is no need to play on words, to classify terrorists are moderate and non-moderate," Putin said. "What is the difference?" Putin said, suggesting that "in the opinion of some experts… So-called moderate bandits behead people moderately or gently."

Law and Justice is most popular among working class, rural, and church-going voters in eastern Poland. It has promised to lower the retirement age, boost child support, increase the minimum wage, and lower income tax, while levying extra taxes on banks and supermarket chains.

It has attacked Civic Platform for agreeing to take in Syrian refugees under an EU scheme. It has also, over the past eight years of Civic Platform rule, depicted it as a German and Russian “lapdog”. A survey by CBOS on Friday put Law and Justice on 40.5 percent, ahead of the incumbent centre-right Civic Platform on 28.4 percent.

He said: "We believe that the Russian interference in Syria is very dangerous because it exacerbates the conflict." He also claimed the country's war can only be ended if President Bashar al-Assad – a long-time ally of Vladimir Putin – is overthrown. Jubeir described Assad as the magnet that "attracted foreign fighters from all over the world" to fight for ISIS against his regime.

Washington also believes the terror group – which controls vast swathes of Syria and Iraq – cannot be tackled unless Assad is removed from power. When asked whether Assad could play a role in any Syrian interim government Jubeir said: "His role would be to leave Syria. The best case scenario is that we wake up in the morning and Bashar al-Assad is not there."

The prince also claims that a clear majority of the country’s powerful Islamic clerics, known as the Ulama, would back a palace coup to oust the current King and install Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, a former Interior Minister, in his place. “The Ulama and religious people prefer Prince Ahmed – not all of them, but 75 per cent,” said the prince, himself a grandson of King Ibn Saud, who founded the ruling dynasty in 1932.

Support from the clerics would be vital for any change of monarch, since in the Saudi system only they have the power to confer religious and therefore political legitimacy on the leadership.

The revelation suggests there is increasing pressure within the normally secretive Saudi royal family to bring to a head the internal power struggle that has erupted since King Salman inherited the throne at the beginning of this year. The prince, who cannot be named for security reasons, is the author of two recently published letters calling for the royal family to replace the current Saudi leadership.

Lavrov said: We’ve made Americans the proposal announced by President Vladimir Putin yesterday. We suggested that they send a [US] military delegation to Moscow to coordinate a number of joint steps, and after that we could have sent to Washington a top-level delegation led by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, [but] … It is sad that our American colleagues in this case in fact do not side with those who fight against terrorism.

Then, on Tuesday October 20th, as CBS News online reported the following day, “The US has told Iraq’s leaders they must choose between ongoing American support in the battle against militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and asking the Russians to intervene instead. Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday that the Iraqis had promised they would not request any Russian airstrikes or support for the fight against ISIS.”

However, Iraq already had done precisely that — and had even said that Russia seemed more committed to defeating ISIS than America is. The US has made clear, to the Iraqis, that America will do anything to defeat Russia — even abandon the fight against ISIS in Iraq, if need be — and that the US will absolutely not ally with Russia against ISIS, under any circumstances. This makes abundantly clear, to the whole world, that the current American government considers its main enemy to be not jihadists, but Russians.

In the US, on the other hand, we are being led by a weak, ineffective con man in the White House that has just a 45.3 percent approval rating. Under Obama, the federal government seems to be inept at just about everything, and this is especially true when it comes to foreign policy.

It has gotten to the point where it is really embarrassing to be an American. The Russians know this and aren’t afraid to gloat about it. In fact, one Russian commentator even suggested that Barack Obama isn’t “a real man”, and it is hard to argue with that.

And of course what is playing out in Syria right now is the latest example of this. Russia’s bombing campaign has accomplished in just a few weeks what the Obama administration was either unwilling or unable to do in over a year. The success of this campaign has propelled Putin to unprecedented heights of popularity.

Tensions between our two nations are rising, and the Russians are united behind a very strong leader that gets things done and that doesn’t mess around. What have we got? Perhaps we shouldn’t be so arrogant. We don’t exactly have a winning hand.

The FBI, state and local law enforcement and emergency officials, and the energy companies that own the tanks formed a group called the Safety Alliance of Cushing. Soon, guards took up posts along the perimeter of storage facilities and newly installed cameras kept constant surveillance. References to the giant tanks and pipelines were removed from the Cushing Chamber of Commerce website. In 2004, the Safety Alliance simulated a series of emergencies: an explosion, a fire, a hostage situation.

After the shale boom added millions of additional barrels to Cushing, its tanks swelled to a peak hoard of more than 60 million barrels this spring. That's about as much petroleum as the US uses in three days, and it's more than six times the quantity that triggered security concerns after September 11. The Safety Alliance has remained vigilant, even staging tornado simulations after a few close calls.

Now the massive oil stockpile faces an emerging threat: earthquakes. In the past month, a flurry of quakes have hit within a few miles of Cushing, rattling the town and its massive tanks. According to the Oklahoma Geological Survey, more than a dozen quakes have registered 3.0 or higher on the Richter scale within a few miles of Cushing since mid-September. The biggest, registering at 4.5, hit about three miles away on October 10.

This is all part of the disturbing rise in earthquakes in Oklahoma, which has corresponded to increased fracking activity and oil production in the state. Since 2008, Oklahoma has gone from averaging fewer than two earthquakes per year that measure at least 3.0 in magnitude to surpassing California as the most seismically active state in the continental US. This year, Oklahoma is on pace to endure close to 1,000 earthquakes. Seismologists believe the quakes are the result of wastewater injection wells used by the fracking industry. For now the threat of quakes has the city on higher alert than the threat of a terror strike.

According to Sechin it’s the United States not OPEC that controls the global oil market. "OPEC is no longer the regulator, its meeting on October 21 [with non-OPEC members] did not bring any decisions," according to Sechin.

Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak said shale oil is losing its influence on the world market, and there has been a steady decline in its production in the recent months. According to the minister, dropping prices cause investment outflow. Subsequently, the number of drilling rigs in the United States is also reducing: a year before there were 1600 rigs with about 600 now.

US Secretary of State John Kerry expressed a "cautious measure of optimism" after a four-hour meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Berlin on Thursday about proposals that could help defuse the deadly wave of recent violence in Israel. Kerry, his voice hoarse after an overnight flight and the lengthy talks, told reporters that he planned to raise the proposals with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan's King Abdullah in a meeting Saturday in Jordan's capital, Amman.

"I come directly from several hours of conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu and I would characterize that conversation as one that gave me a cautious measure of optimism that there may be some things that maybe in the next couple of days put on the table which would have an impact - I hope," Kerry said. "I don't want to be excessive in stating that, but I am cautiously encouraged."

"I think it’s time for the international community to say clearly to President Abbas: 'Stop spreading lies about Israel'," Netanyahu told Kerry at the beginning of the meeting. "Lies that Israel wants to change the status quo on the Temple Mount, lies that Israel wants to tear down the al-Aqsa Mosque and lies that Israel is executing Palestinians. I think it’s time that the international community told President Abbas to stop the incitement and hold him accountable for his words and his deeds," Netanyahu added.

After being hit with criticism from all directions, the prime minister went back on his comments and clarified, saying on Wednesday, "I had absolutely no intention of absolving Hitler of his diabolical responsibility for the extermination of Europe's Jews. Hitler was responsible for the Final Solution to murder six million, it was his decision. At the same time it is absurd to ignore the role played by the Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, a war criminal, in encouraging and goading Hitler, Ribbentrop, Himmler and others to exterminate European Jewry."

During a press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, the prime minister directed the blame to Abbas, saying, "I think the real question should be directed not at me, but at President Abbas. Why do he, and the Palestinian Authority, glorify, officially, the mufti of Jerusalem as a Palestinian icon? They call him the father of the Palestinian nation. This is a war criminal who was sought for war crimes in Nuremberg. This is a man who collaborated with the Nazis. And yet he is glorified in school books, in texts, as the father of the nation and a figure of emulation."

The three-week gathering, known as a synod, has erupted into a theological slugfest over Pope Francis’s vision of a more-inclusive church, and it has displayed the most bitter and public infighting since the heady days of Catholic reform in the 1960s. Archbishop Tomash Peta of Kazakhstan captured the magnitude of the divide, raising eyebrows — and a few incredulous laughs — as he decried some of the policy changes floated at the meeting as having the scent of “infernal smoke.”

It was just another day at a gathering that, more than any event since Francis began his papacy in 2013, has highlighted how the pontiff’s outreach to once-scorned Catholics has triggered a tug of war for the soul of the Catholic Church. More important, it underscored just how hard it may be for the pope to recast the church in his image. The pushback by traditionalists has been so strong that the chances of fast changes on contentious family issues — whether to offer Communion to divorced and remarried Catholics or to craft more-welcoming language for gays and lesbians — have substantially dimmed, if not died.

As the synod’s end nears, there has been a last-ditch push to find common ground that could at least open the door to policy alterations. But some observers already are comparing Francis to President Obama — a man whose reformist agenda was bogged down by a conservative Congress. “Francis has the same problem that Obama had,” said the Rev Thomas J Reese, a senior analyst for the National Catholic Reporter. “He promised the world, but Congress wouldn’t let him deliver. If nothing much comes of this synod, I think people will give the pope a pass and blame the bishops for stopping change.”