Only days ago, SNB officials had described the 1.20 francs per euro cap, introduced in 2011 at the height of the euro zone crisis to fend off deflation and a recession, as a policy cornerstone.

The U-turn sent the franc nearly 30 percent higher against the euro in chaotic early trading. Coming a week before the European Central Bank is expected to unveil a bond-buying program to counter deflationary pressures, it fed speculation that this quantitative easing (QE) scheme will be so big that the SNB would have struggled to defend the cap.

On social media, the move was dubbed "Francogeddon".

With more than 40 percent of Swiss exports going to the euro zone, firms across Switzerland warned of a plunge in profits, with the luxury and tourism industries most exposed. "Today's SNB action is a tsunami; for the export industry and for tourism, and finally for the entire country," said Nick Hayek, chief executive of Swiss watch firm Swatch (UHR.VX). SNB Chairman Thomas Jordan denied at a news conference that the move amounted to a "panic reaction", saying the cap had been scrapped because it was unsustainable.

President Joachim Gauck also addressed the vigil at the Brandenburg Gate, organised by the Central Council of Muslims in Germany under the banner "Let's be there for each other. Terror: not in our name!" "We are all Germany," Gauck said. "We, democrats with our different political, cultural and religious backgrounds; we, who respect and need each other; we, who want to live life in unity, justice and freedom. Our answer to the fundamentalism of the Islamist perpetrators of violence is democracy, respect for the law, respect for each other, respect for human dignity. This is our way of life!"

The vigil came a day after the self-declared Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident, or PEGIDA, drew a record 25,000 marchers to its 12th weekly rally in Dresden, located in the former communist East Germany. PEGIDA, launched in October, has grown to set new attendance records week after week and spawned smaller copycat groups nationwide, provoking much soul-searching in a country haunted by its history of Nazi rule and the Holocaust. The protests have been spurred by a sharp rise in refugees seeking political asylum in Germany, which has been struggling to house the newcomers in converted schools, office blocks and container villages.

China’s slowdown is real – preliminary data suggests 2014 will mark the weakest GDP growth in 24 years – but the country still has plenty of money to play with that is taking it places the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) wouldn’t dare. Their reward? More oil, of course. With tough conditions and greater access to raw commodities, China looks to turn the high risk into equal or greater returns.

In Russia, much has been made of the deepening energy ties with its neighbor to the south. With Western financing no closer to a return and a hesitancy to dig deeper into its foreign exchange reserves, Russia turned to China for a bailout. China has obliged, agreeing to finance state-owned Rosneft’s debt in addition to opening a $24 billion currency swap program, which could expand further.

For its part, China gains access to Russia’s tightly held upstream sector – in the form of the giant Vankor field – and fulfills its needs downstream with favorable long-term oil and gas deals. Further loans and infrastructure investments are likely moving forward; one of China’s biggest debt-rating agencies Dagong believes Russian debt is a safer investment than US government debt.

Speaking on Radio 4's Today programme, presenter Jim Naughtie said: "I've got a letter here that was sent out by OUP to an author doing something for young people. Among the things prohibited in the text that was commissioned by OUP was the following: Pigs plus sausages, or anything else which could be perceived as pork.

"Now, if a respectable publisher, tied to an academic institution, is saying you've got to write a book in which you cannot mention pigs because some people might be offended, it’s just ludicrous. It is just a joke." Muslim Labour MP Khalid Mahmood said: "I absolutely agree. That’s absolute utter nonsense. And when people go too far, that brings the whole discussion into disrepute."

“Let’s get one thing clear: This economy is never truly coming back unless we reverse the birth and death trends of American businesses,” writes Clifton. Indeed, the numbers are striking. Contrary to the oft-cited 26 million businesses in America figure, Clifton says 20 million of these so-called “businesses” are merely companies on paper with zero workers, profits, customers, or sales.

In reality, America has just 6 million businesses with one or more employers – 3.8 million of which have four or fewer employees. In total, these 6 million U.S. companies provide jobs for more than 100 million people in America. The Gallup CEO says the numbers paint an ominous portrait of America in a dire state of decline. “I don’t want to sound like a doomsayer, but when small and medium-sized businesses are dying faster than they’re being born, so is free enterprise,” says Clifton. “And when free enterprise dies, America dies with it.”

“There’s plenty of people out there saying: ‘give us all the data you’ve got and we can tell you what we can do with it’,” he told the Financial Times on the sidelines of the Detroit motor show, adding that this included “Silicon Valley” companies, as well as advertising groups. “And we’re saying: ‘No thank you’.”

About two-thirds of today’s new cars have sensors and communications systems that send and receive data, offering potential for carmakers to find out more about how drivers use their vehicles. But the systems could also provide insurers and advertisers with personal information about customers. BMW said it had a firewall in place to protect crucial data about the internal running of the car. But any transmission of data raises concerns about who might access that information — and what they might do with it.

Adam Jonas, analyst at Morgan Stanley, said it was a “major issue” for carmakers, which “unanimously want to create a barrier on this information”. He said: “They don’t want to be the first one to let [their] guard down on information privacy or to become the first company to have a car hacked with bad consequences and image.”

Ford was forced into an embarrassing retraction at last year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas after Jim Farley, then head of marketing at the US carmaker, said: “We know everyone who breaks the law. We know exactly when you do it because we have a GPS sensor in your car.” He added: “By the way, we don’t supply that data to anyone.” Mr Farley later clarified that the company did not track anyone without their permission.

Many mainstream Muslim organizations also reacted by saying that the mere depiction of the prophet is a sacrilege: Egypt's Islamic body Dar al-Ifta branded the publication "an unjustified provocation against the feelings of 1.5 billion Muslims," AFP reported.

"This edition will result in a new wave of hatred in French and Western society. What the magazine is doing does not serve coexistence and the cultural dialogue Muslims aspire to," Dar al-Ifta said in a statement. Sunni Islam's most renowned center of learning, Al-Azhar in Cairo, said that the cartoons "stir up hatred" and "do not serve the peaceful coexistence between peoples."

Tabnak, a conservative online outlet in Iran, wrote that "Charlie Hebdo has again insulted the Prophet." Charlie Hebdo’s front cover Wednesday shows the Prophet Muhammad shedding a tear while holding a "Je Suis Charlie" sign. The headline reads: “Tout est pardonné” (All is forgiven).

The Ukip leader was interviewed yesterday by presenter Sean Hannity on the causes of the Paris massacre, following his comments last week in which he blamed a ‘fifth column’ and ‘gross multiculturalism’ for the attacks. In yesterday’s interview, Mr Hannity asked why Britain and other countries had allowed ‘people to come to the country, not assimilate, separate, take their land ostensibly and then risk even being at war with them’.

Mr Farage said: ‘I agreed with your sentiments entirely’. He added: ‘So wherever you look you see this blind eye being turned and you see the growth of ghettos where the police and all the normal agents of the law have withdrawn and that is where Sharia Law has come in.’ Mr Farage said the imposition of Sharia law meant there had been no prosecutions for the ‘tens of thousands’ of female genital mutilations carried out in Britain. He said ‘moral cowardice’ was to blame for the police not trying to catch Muslim men involved in child abuse in parts of Northern England. Mr Farage said: ‘We’ve been turning a blind eye to preachers of hate that have been coming here from the Middle East and saying things for which the rest of us would be arrested.’

Baron Evans of Weardale, who as Jonathan Evans worked for the Security Service for 33 years, also warned that the world faced a build-up of trained terrorists not seen since al-Qaeda ran training camps in Afghanistan before 9/11. He spoke in a House of Lords debate as police forces prepared to deploy officers at newsagents selling a special issue of Charlie Hebdo depicting the Prophet Mohammed after extremists said it would “definitely” provoke fresh terrorist attacks.

Around 2,000 copies of the controversial magazine are being sent to Britain, where they will be sold by a small number of independent retailers after major names including WH Smith decided not to stock them. On a day when the head of Europol told MPs that up to 5,000 Europeans pose a terrorist threat after going to Syria to fight, Lord Evans said the “hesitancy” of the Government to “engage with the religious dimension of the threat we face” was making it harder to prevent young men becoming radicalised.

Meanwhile Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, accused British public bodies of showing “moral cowardice” in failing to tackle problems associated with multiculturalism, allowing “big ghettos” to develop and turning a “blind eye” to hate preachers.

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."