According to France Info, he was sentenced to four years behind bars. All over France judges are putting France’s recently approved Anti-Terror Act to use, a law spearheaded by Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve and geared primarily at stopping terrorists and their sympathizers from condoning barbaric acts and attracting new recruits to their cause on the internet.

In Toulouse, southern France, three men between the ages of 20 and 25 received ten-month jail terms after they applauded the murder of 17 people during last week’s attacks. Dubbed the “French Patriot Act” by its opponents, the bill received the support of a majority of lawmakers in the Senate but was deemed “anti-democratic” by civil rights groups and some political parties who were wary of the extended powers it granted the government.

Among its most controversial clauses are a travel ban on suspected would-be terrorists and the power to block websites thought to be promoting terrorist acts, without a prior court order. With tensions running high in a France desperate to avoid further attacks, the lines between genuine terror speech and offensive rhetoric could become blurred. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls laid down the law this week, simply saying "racism, anti-Semitism and the glorification of terrorism (apologie du terrorisme) are crimes."

General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, indicated to the House of Representatives armed services committee that the strength of Isis relative to the Iraqi army may be such that he would recommend abandoning Obama’s oft-repeated pledge against returning US ground troops to combat in Iraq.

Retaking the critical city of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest, and re-establishing the border between Iraq and Syria that Isis has erased “will be fairly complex terrain” for the Iraqi security forces that the US is once again supporting, Dempsey acknowledged. “I’m not predicting at this point that I would recommend that those forces in Mosul and along the border would need to be accompanied by US forces, but we’re certainly considering it,” he said.

US military planners take this threat so seriously that when the president goes overseas, one of the doomsday planes always follows. It needs to be nearby at all times, as does the military aide within a few yards of the president carrying nuclear launch codes and communications gear. Similar provisions have been made in Russia, which maintains most of its intercontinental ballistic missiles on a high state of alert for fear of losing them in an American first strike.

The reason you may have missed the story is that almost nobody besides InsideDefense.com reported it. National media were too busy covering more weighty matters like the efforts of North Korean agents to suppress a Sony film farce that insults the Dear Leader, and the attack on a French satirical magazine by a motley crew of extremists. How could nuclear Armageddon compete with that?

When a conventional munition is exploded, it heats the immediate vicinity by a few thousand degrees. The heat of a nuclear blast at its center is more akin to tens of millions of degrees. So if one of those 500-kiloton warheads is exploded a mile above Boston or Dallas, everything within a one-mile radius is destroyed, heavy damage extends to three miles, and fires will be widespread out to five miles. Not that it will matter to most of the people near ground zero — they will be killed immediately by blast effects or a wind-spread firestorm that expands faster than they can escape (initial wind speed: 700 miles per hour).

People further away will linger longer before succumbing to the effects of prompt and delayed radiation. Electronic devices will be shut down for a hundred miles in every direction due to the electromagnetic pulse generated by the blast. And that’s just the effects from one nuclear warhead. Russia has over 2,000 nuclear warheads capable of reaching America.

"The strategy will not change," said Suhail bin Mohammed al-Mazrouei, speaking in Abu Dhabi. “We are telling the market and other producers that they need to be rational.” Mr Mazrouei added that it could take years for prices to stablise, adding: “We are passing through very interesting times… it is unlikely that we will see a sudden rise [in oil prices].”

However, tensions are mounting within Opec as many of the groups members watch their economies, which depend on $100 oil, head deep into recession. Efforts by Venezuela, which opposed the cartel’s decision in November to keep production levels unchanged, to persuade Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies to change strategy have failed.

The German government confirmed back in September that it had satisfactorily complied with Ukraine's requests including "defensive equipment". Even trans-Atlantic supporters of Kiev's February 2014 putsch, are now warning that a considerable rise in the influence of fascist militias and certain oligarchs is threatening to establish an uncontrollable warlord system. Prime Minister Yatsenyuk's party has particularly taken the lead in supporting right-wing extremist battalions. Yesterday, Yatsenyuk was ceremoniously received by German President Joachim Gauck.

Yatsenyuk, who, with considerable German support, came to power in Kiev in February 2014, is now in Berlin to obtain additional support for his policies. A political accord was signed yesterday in the Ministry of the Economy granting credit guarantees of half a billion Euros. Even though the German government is still seeking to keep the Minsk Peace Talks alive, it cannot avoid backing Yatsenyuk's pro-western government - even at the risk of Ukraine actually continuing its development of "warlordization," and succumbing to civil war.

Yet now it appears that the far right sees an opening in the new atmosphere of angst that could help bolster its long-standing critiques of Islam and calls for tighter security and immigration caps. The terrorist violence is also fueling fears of a backlash against Muslims, particularly among France’s community of 5 million, the largest in Europe. Muslim leaders say the days after last week’s shootings have produced 54 “anti-Muslim attacks” – an unprecedented number that includes the beating of a Muslim boy after a moment of silence for last week’s victims as well as multiple arson attacks on mosques. “I’m very scared of what the National Front is going to try to do,” said Sarah Belhaddad, a 17-year-old French Muslim student in Paris.

Amid the tragedy, Marine Le Pen — the leader of the National Front, who once compared Muslim immigration to France to the Nazi occupation — has been going nonstop, drilling home her message that the French must stop being “angels.” Shunned by organizers of a historic national unity march Sunday in Paris, she opted to hold her own rally in the south of France. “This is a turning point for open debate,” Le Pen said in an interview Monday at her office in a western suburb of Paris. “If, after these attacks, politicians shut down any ability to debate these issues, the victims will have died twice.” She is not alone. In the days since the attack, from Spain to France to Germany, the far right has sought to leverage the events of last week. And it may be paying off.

In Germany, a growing anti-Islamic movement known as Pegida, which has deeply worried German politicians, has staged weekly marches in several cities since October. The largest, in the eastern city of Dresden, drew a record 25,000 anti-Islam protesters Monday night. That was 7,000 more than last week — even as organizers said they managed to spread their demonstrations to at least two other German cities, Munich and Leipzig. They also plan to start similar protests in other nations including Britain, Norway, Spain and Denmark.

Speaking to an audience in London which was streamed online to thousands of his followers, Rahman praised Al Qaeda and said ‘Britain is the enemy of Islam.’ Sam Westrop, director of counter-extremism group Stand for Peace told the Sunday Mirror: ‘His kind of rhetoric is not an echo of Islamist terror and extremism – it is a driving force behind it. It is truly reprehensible for him to speak like this, especially so soon after Paris.’

His speech on Friday night came to light after reporters from the Sunday Mirror gained access to an online live stream - they then notified the Metropolitan Police. The newspaper reported that in the video Rahman claimed France was carrying out 'ethnic cleansing', and told his followers what happened in France was 'war.'

But speaking in the European Parliament, Mr Farage brushed aside the claims he was ‘seeking to divide’ the country for political points.

He told MEPs: ‘We need an honest admission that actually our political decisions have led to much of what has happened. Just think about foreign policy – from Afghanistan through Iraq, through Libya and even the attempt to arm the rebels in Syria.

‘All of these we were told were to make our streets safer, when in fact what we have done is stir up real resentments within the Muslim community and it’s had the very opposite effect.’ He added that ‘mass immigration’ had ‘made it frankly impossible for many new communities to integrate’.

But Mr Farage said: ‘Perhaps worst of all we have been guilty of weakness – lack of courage – a lack of assertion of who we are as people. We’ve turned a blind eye to many of our minority communities to practices that would not be tolerated in the rest of the population. We’ve allowed preachers of hate to go around saying things that are totally unacceptable.

‘The result of all this is we have a fifth column living in our communities that is utterly opposed to our values and how we deal with that is vital for the future. Unless we are prepared to admit our own culpability in much of what has happened we are not going to be able to find solutions. We are going to have to be a lot braver and courageous in standing up for our Judeo-Christian culture.’

The figure is the most aggressive forecast issued so far by any major bank and implies quantitative easing (QE) of at least €2.3 trillion, two or even three times the level suggested so far by ECB officials. It comes amid a blizzard of leaks from Frankfurt over the size and shape of QE as the ECB prepares for a pivotal decision next week. Most analysts say sovereign bond purchases are almost certain after the currency bloc slumped into deflation in December, though legal and political barriers complicate the picture.

A German-led bloc of hawks has been trying to head off any form of debt mutualisation or fiscal union by the back door. This may lead to a messy compromise where the central bank of each country buys its own national debt rather than sharing the risk. This has been condemned by analysts as recipe for trouble, further fragmenting the currency union.

'We see painful evidence of this in the events reported daily in the news, not least the tragic slayings which took place in Paris a few days ago,' he said in his yearly speech to the members of the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See. 'Religious fundamentalism, even before it eliminates human beings by perpetrating horrendous killings, eliminates God himself, turning him into a mere ideological pretext,' he said.

Francis also denounced the 'abominable' kidnapping and enslavement of young girls by Boko Haram militants in Nigeria and the slaughter of 'unspeakable brutality' of more than 100 children by the Taliban in Pakistan.