“The reported violence and escalation (at the site) constitute a provocation and incitement” ahead of important Jewish and Muslim holy days, European Commission spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic told reporters in Brussels. “It is crucial that all parties demonstrate calm and restraint and full respect for the status quo of the holy sites,” Kocijancic said.

The 28-nation EU had recently “issued an appeal for full respect of the holy sites and said very clearly that any change of the status quo would have deeply destabilizing effects,” she added. The clashes began Sunday morning, with security forces seizing pipe bombs at the site in an operation carried out hours before Jews prepared to celebrate the new year. The Shin Bet security service alerted police to the cache, apparently an effort by Palestinians to stock up on bombs, flares and rocks ahead of an organized riot.

The UN and US also have urged restraint on both sides amid the latest clashes, while Jordan, which has custodianship rights over Muslim holy places in Jerusalem under its 1994 peace treaty with Israel, has warned that ties were at stake. The Hamas terror group said Tuesday that Israeli action at the Temple Mount constituted a “declaration of war.”

Engulfed by a refugee crisis that represents the biggest movement of humanity since the Second World War on its shores, the EU's troubled elites are now grappling with a humanitarian disaster which far eclipses talk of debt write-offs or fiscal discipline in the Mediterranean.

But the appetite to drive home integration in the face of such flux remains undimmed in Brussels.

German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble made German discontent clear this week, calling the Commission's drive for greater risk-sharing and a common bank insurance scheme as "unacceptable". "Schaeuble, the German government and wider public, don't want to have an economic government in Europe, but an economic constitution," says Michael Wohlgemuth, director of Open Europe in Berlin.

"This is a rules-based stability framework where major decision-making would be taken out of the hands of politicians and dealt with by specialists." This perennial problem has plagued the European project for even longer than French and German clashes. It is one that Europe's elites have no answer to. "You cannot build a well-functioning, durable monetary union, without the members accepting a loss of sovereignty. It's one of the other", said Belgian Finance Minister, Mr van Overtveldt.

The dollar’s dominant reserve currency status makes this a defining moment for the global economy as a whole. If Committee members bury their heads in the sand, and treat it as solely a domestic matter, the decision may come back to haunt them.

Whatever the Fed does is almost bound to cause problems. Exiting such a prolonged period of ultra-loose monetary policy is proving almost impossible to do without upset. As the BIS has repeatedly warned, the danger is that seven years of easy money has simply laid the ground for repeated future crises.

1) The majority of the migrants are not Syrian families fleeing from war and ISIS persecution. Of the 50% who claim to be Syrian, in some areas 90% don’t even have documentation to prove it. UN figures show that 72% of the migrants are men, with just 13% women and 15% children. Many of these people have nothing whatsoever to do with the Syrian refugee crisis.

2) Major TV news networks will only broadcast footage which shows the migrants in a positive light. Smiling, laughing children, happy mothers, exuberant fathers. The tragedy of the drowned Syrian boy, the truth behind which was completely misreported for days in order to elicit unquestioning sympathy for the migrant invasion.

3) In the name of tolerance, we’re being told to open the floodgates to waves of people who are completely intolerant of liberal, western values and principles. Since Sweden opened its doors to mass immigration, rapes have skyrocketed by a staggering 1400%, with most of the culprits being immigrants. The problem of no-go Muslim ghetto areas where police, ambulance and firemen are attacked by mobs continues to worsen across Europe.

4) EU countries are exploiting the migrant crisis to import huge numbers of people who will eventually vote for more big government and more EU bureaucracy. The claim that Europe needs huge numbers of immigrants for cheap labor is a complete myth. Look at Sweden – 58% of welfare money is paid to immigrants. Why aren’t European countries incentivizing their own populations to have children, not opening the floodgates to an army of welfare scroungers and potential jihadists?

5) This migrant crisis wouldn’t exist in the first place if our NATO powers hadn’t armed and funded jihadists in the Middle East and North Africa to topple secular governments. Why have major western media outlets insisted on excluding all of these factors from their coverage of the migrant crisis? My previous two videos on this issue have received a combined total of 6 million views on YouTube & Facebook. Clearly there’s a huge appetite for someone to tell the truth about what’s actually going on.

The situation is very serious, Putin said, adding that Moscow is very worried that IS terrorists are publicly announcing their designs on Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. The jihadists also plan to spread their activities to Europe, Russia, central and southeastern Asia. Putin said it’s necessary for geopolitical ambitions to be set aside in the fight against IS terrorists.

"Simple common sense, responsibility for global and regional safety require uniting efforts of the international community [to fight] such a threat. It is necessary to set aside geopolitical ambitions, drop so-called double standards, the policy of direct or indirect use of separate terrorist groups for achieving own goals, including removing the governments and regimes."

Russia is supporting the Syrian government in its fight against terrorism and will continue its support, Putin said. "We give technical-military support to Damascus and will continue doing it," he said. "And we call on other countries to join us in this."

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who returns to the UN after a 10-year absence, will be delivering his address on September 28. Cuban President Raul Castro is also expected to address the gathering for the first time in New York on that day. Other high-level speakers will include China’s President Xi Jinping, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and US President Barack Obama.

The Pope is also scheduled to deliver an address which will kick off the conference which is designed to shape the direction the world takes across the century. “The summit, of course, marks only the beginning,” President of the General Assembly, the Danish Mogens Lykketoft said. “There is an urgent need for action right across the three pillars of the UN and ample opportunities to do so during this session… an ambitious and universal climate agreement is an absolute must and the first real test of the world community’s ability to deliver the necessary policy tools for sustainable development.”

Besides tackling sustainability goals, Lykketoft urged the world democratic body to strengthen security around the globe and to remedy the impact which war zones have on civilian well-being and prosperity.

It comes as Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, said Britain will get a deal if it gives the green light to a raft of powerful new EU institutions..

A Berlin source said agreeing not to “block” Mrs Merkel's defence plans is a “favour” that she would seek from Mr Cameron as he looks for her support in the renegotiation. “If you want favours, you have to give favours,” the source said. “If Cameron wants a ‘flexible Europe’, he must let other members integrate further. Yes - opt out, opt out, opt out - and then shut up.”

The Telegraph has seen an unpublished position paper drawn up by Europe and Defence policy committees of Mrs Merkel’s party, the CDU, that sets out a detailed 10-point plan for military co-operation in Europe.

It is understood to closely reflect her thinking, and calls for a permanent EU military HQ, combined weapons procurement and a shared military doctrine. The paper says it is “urgent” to integrate armed forces “in the face of multifaceted crises”.

The INSA poll for German daily Bild showed support for the AfD, which was dogged by infighting in the first half of the year and saw its founder break away to form a new party, climbing to 5.5 percent, its highest level since late May.

"The refugee crisis is pulling the conservatives down and pushing the AfD over the 5 percent threshold," INSA head Hermann Binkert told Bild. Presenting its asylum policy at a news conference in Berlin last Monday, the AfD backed the introduction of border controls to stem the tide of refugees entering Germany from Hungary, via Austria. Over the weekend, Merkel bowed to pressure from state premiers, including Bavarian leader Horst Seehofer, and agreed to such controls.

In the interview, where questions were posed in Portuguese and the responses were given by Pope Francis in Spanish, the pontiff said coveting money will bring about both human and ecological ruin: “This is the tip of the iceberg. We see these refugees, these poor people who are escaping from war, escaping from hunger, but that’s the tip of the iceberg.

“But underlying that is the cause, and the cause is a socio-economic system that is bad, unjust, because within an economic system, within everything, within the world, speaking of the ecological problem, within the socio-economic society, in politics, the person always has to be the center. And today’s dominant economic system has removed the person from the center, and at the center is the god of money. It’s the fashionable god today.”

The sources, speaking to Reuters on condition they not be identified, gave the most forthright account yet from the region of what the United States fears is a deepening Russian military role in Syria’s civil war, though one of the Lebanese sources said the number of Russians involved so far was small.

US officials said Russia sent two tank landing ships and additional cargo aircraft to Syria in the past day or so and deployed a small number of naval infantry forces. The US officials, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said the intent of Russia’s military moves in Syria was unclear. One suggested the focus may be on preparing an airfield near the port city of Latakia, a stronghold of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

US officials have not ruled out the possibility that Russia may want to use the airfield for air combat missions.