“The behaviour it encourages is hardly appropriate to this or any other time of year. Shoppers have been injured and assaulted. Staff have been cursed at and threatened. Chaos has been visited on stores around the country. In one incident, a mob of 200 refused to leave when managers told them they’d run out of stock. It is almost unbelievable that police had to deal with unruly shoppers. As Sir Peter Fahy, the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, put it: ‘Our officers have enough to do already.’

Disturbing as such images might be, perhaps the real point to make about Black Friday is its sheer lack of point. Buying gifts for friends and loved-ones, the sense of preparation and imminent celebration – these are important. But there is absence of context, a mindlessness even, to what we are now seeing that makes me concerned. I have even asked myself the question: Is this the Black Day that killed Christmas?

Of course, it is only in recent years that we’ve even heard of Black Friday, and that is because it is an American phenomenon through and through. It has its roots in Thanksgiving, which itself is based on Christian celebrations for the harvest, and is associated closely with the Pilgrim Fathers. In their greed, American retailers are now opening stores on Thanksgiving itself.”

He made his comments as it was disclosed that a black hole in the EU budget could leave British taxpayers paying an extra £34 billion over six years. He said that a British exit would leave Europe “wounded” and that “everything should be done to avoid it”. “Without the United Kingdom, Europe would be wounded, even amputated – therefore everything should be done to avoid it,” he said.

“But it will survive. Without France, Europe — the European idea – would be dead.” Experts have warned that the dire state of the French economy risks creating stagnation in the eurozone that could cause another global financial crisis. Mr Cameron has pledged to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU before holding an in-out referendum in 2017.

His remarks were interpreted by the market as a signal that the cartel would keep its production ceiling at 30 million barrels per day (bpd), which sent the price of crude lower. Brent crude - a global benchmark comprised of a blend of high-quality oil from 15 North Sea fields - fell 1.3 percent to $77.30 per barrel after Mr Naimi's comments, before recovering to trade flat at $78.29 by late afternoon. Brent crude has fallen 30 percent since June.

Crude traded in the US fell to as low as $74 per barrel as traders bet that Opec will allow the price to fall further amid growing signs of a global price war amid producers. "There remains little prospect of any production cut being agreed at [Thursday's] Opec meeting," said brokers at Commerzbank. "Opec will merely agree to comply better with the current production target of 30 million bpd.

American producers risk becoming victims of their own success. At today’s prices of just over $70 a barrel, drilling is close to becoming unprofitable for some explorers, Leonid Fedun, vice president and board member at OAO Lukoil (LKOD), said in an interview in London.

“In 2016, when OPEC completes this objective of cleaning up the American marginal market, the oil price will start growing again,” said Fedun, who’s made a fortune of more than $4 billion in the oil business, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. “The shale boom is on a par with the dot-com boom. The strong players will remain, the weak ones will vanish.”

At the moment, some US producers are surviving because they managed to hedge the prices they get for their oil at about $90 a barrel, Fedun said. When those arrangements expire, life will become much more difficult, he said.

As he had at recent meetings in Berlin, Frankfurt, and Bochum, Schwarz explained that a watershed in the turn towards war came with an October 3, 2013 speech by President Joachim Gauck, in which he demanded that Germany once again play a role "in Europe and the world". Schwarz explained how German militarism was being advanced behind the backs of the people. The government, the media and all political parties — including the Left Party — expressly support the revival of German militarism in spite of popular hostility.

"The country where the new course was put into practice was Ukraine," Schwarz stated. He described how the former German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, together with the US diplomat Victoria Nuland and EU Foreign Policy Representative Baroness Ashton, intervened directly in the activities of the “Euro-Maidan" at the the end of 2013, and then prepared the coup against Ukrainian president Victor Yanukovych, which was spearheaded by the fascist Right Sector. Since then the German Government has backed the Poroshenko government and helped coordinate new NATO deployments at the Russian border.

"Why do the German elites once again want war?" Schwarz asked. He then explained that with its intervention in Ukraine, the German bourgeoisie was returning to its historic policy of expansion towards the east. He detailed how the European Union had been plunged into a deep crisis following the outbreak of the financial crash of 2008. Germany's response was the revival of militarism. As was the case in 1914 and 1939, Germany was once again seeking to dominate Europe in order to become a world power. Schwarz illustrated this with reference to a web site run by the Foreign Office, with an article emblazoned with the headline: "Germany's destiny: lead Europe in order to lead the world". "A few years ago such a proclamation would have unleashed a storm of indignation," Schwarz said.

“An economically isolated Russia, one that may face collapse, would not help improve security in Europe or in Ukraine, but would pose a danger to itself and others,” Steinmeier said. “One of the problems is that many people aren’t having a dialogue. That’s not true of the Germans.” Steinmeier echoed Chancellor Angela Merkel’s warning that the standoff with Russia over the conflict in Ukraine will be lasting.

Even as fighting flares between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces in the former Soviet republic’s east, with Europe accusing Russia of stoking the conflict, Steinmeier said the door to talks should remain open. The clash over Ukraine “won’t be over tomorrow or the day after tomorrow,” Steinmeier said. “I plead as a necessary reaction not to hold senseless talks, but at the same time, not to foreclose simply on all the channels” with Russia.

Yet there is a snag. The Swiss National Bank (SNB) is the biggest printer of them all in relative terms, far outstripping the Bank of Japan, let alone the US Federal Reserve or the Bank of England – mere amateurs at this game.

The SNB has boosted its balance sheet to a colossal 83 percent of GDP in a maniacal – but fully justified – effort to stop the Swiss franc appreciating beyond 1.20 to the euro, and to head off deflation. It vowed to print whatever is necessary to buy foreign bonds and defend the exchange rate. It has been true to its word since 2011.

It said that as the PLA makes its combat exercises more realistic, training technologies and equipment have become increasingly incapable of meeting the military's requirements, so it is necessary to tap into private businesses' expertise. The 108 items being sought include dummies used by medical personnel and simulators for early warning planes and aircraft carrier operators and technologies such as short-distance wireless positioning and cloud computing.

"These public procurements are unprecedented in their openness, transparency and wide coverage. They will help lift the effectiveness of our military spending and optimise resource distribution, thus boosting the PLA's modernisation drive," the newspaper quoted an unidentified officer from the PLA as saying. According to PLA Daily, 117 defence industry companies and private enterprises have submitted proposals covering 106 of the 108 procurements.

But the growing ranks of these cellphone addicts are turning cities like Tokyo, London, New York and Hong Kong into increasingly hazardous hotspots, where zombified shoppers appear to be part of vast games of human pinball. Tokyo Fire Department, which runs the ambulance service in the megalopolis, says that in the four years to 2013, 122 people had to be rushed to hospital after accidents caused by pedestrians using cellphones.

As well as the vaguely comedic incidents of businessmen smacking into lamp-posts or tripping over dogs, this total also included a middle-aged man who died after straying onto a railway crossing while looking at his phone. More than half of Japanese now own a smartphone and the proportion is rising fast, including children who customarily walk to and from school.

Tokyo is just one of the places struggling to cope with this very 21st Century menace. In China, an amusement park in the south-western megacity of Chongqing has divided a pavement within its grounds into two lanes - one sign-posted "No mobile phones" and the other "Mobile phone use permitted but all consequences are your responsibility."

These projects work by, for example, shading the Earth from the Sun or soaking up carbon dioxide. Ideas include aircraft spraying out sulphur particles at high altitude to mimic the cooling effect of volcanoes or using artificial "trees" to absorb CO2. Now three combined research projects, led by teams from the universities of Leeds, Bristol and Oxford, have explored the implications in more detail.

The central conclusion, according to Dr Matt Watson of Bristol University, is that the issues surrounding geo-engineering - how it might work, the effects it might have and the potential downsides - are "really really complicated". "We don't like the idea but we're more convinced than ever that we have to research it," he said. "Personally I find this stuff terrifying but we have to compare it to doing nothing, to business-as-usual leading us to a world with a 4C rise."

The guard, known as "mourabitoun" ("sentries") consists of dozens of men and women, stationed near the two mosques on the Temple Mount around the clock. They have sometimes been involved in clashes with Jewish worshippers and activists, leading to five female guards being issued recently with restraining orders to stay away from the area. Security officials hope that criminalizing the guard corps will reduce tensions at the site. At the same time, they are united in the opinion that access of right-wing Jewish activists and politicians to the area must also be restricted.

Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino was quite firm on this point on Tuesday. “Members of the radical right took the Temple Mount and made it an agenda,” Danino said. “We cautioned and said that we need to leave the Temple Mount alone — the Knesset members don’t understand what they are igniting.” On the other side of the divide, a Palestinian preacher was recently filmed delivering sermon in support of the Islamic State as well as a hateful rant against Israel, Jews and America within the Al-Aqsa mosque.

In his speech, made available by the Middle East Media Research Institute, the man identified as Ali Abu Ahmad calls for Jerusalem’s liberation from “the Jews, the most vile of creatures” and for the annihilation of America and the international coalition against Islamic State. “Oh Allah, annihilate America and its coalition. Oh Allah, enable us to cut off their heads. Oh Allah, help our brothers, the mujahideen in the land of Iraq and Syria,” Abu Ahmad calls out in the mosque’s main hall.

However, the social network’s staff failed to tell MI5 about the ‘graphic and emotive’ posts from Michael Adebowale, made just six months before the atrocity took place. Incredibly, Facebook had already disabled seven of his accounts – five of which were flagged over links to extremism – without informing security services.

In a long-awaited report, Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee yesterday said that had MI5 known about Adebowale’s messages, Fusilier Rigby’s murder could have been avoided. And in a damning indictment of US-based tech firms, it said the same mistakes could have been made by websites run by Google, Yahoo, Apple, Twitter or Microsoft, which have become a ‘haven’ for terrorists. David Cameron said the internet companies – once frequently courted by his government – were being ‘used to plot murder and mayhem’, adding: ‘It is their social responsibility to act on this ... we expect them to live up to it.’

“The EU’s ability to just grab money from taxpayers whenever it wants is an outrage. It underlines what is structurally wrong with our relationship under the existing treaties," said Bernard Jenkin MP, the chairman of the House of Commons public administration select committee. "The UK parliament should decide how much we want to pay the EU not bureaucrats in Brussels."

Eurosceptic Conservative MPs are "spitting with rage" at the prospect of increased EU contributions and a failure to control Brussels' spending at a time when Britain is making cuts to balance the budget. “The commission is out of control and needs to be brought back under control. This is a problem with having no real democratic check to the EU. The commission writes cheques without any balances," said Jacob Rees Mogg, Tory MP for North East Somerset and member of the Commons European scrutiny committee.