The pages, including a column by former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, are introduced with a drawing of a heart, one half painted with the German flag, one with the US flag, snapping in two. The headline beneath it is ‘Goodbye Freunde’ or ‘Goodbye Friends’. Die Zeit is considered an elitist and extremely important format for German political discussion.

Die Zeit’s take on the matter begins by noting: “We were too naïve. German-American relations have to be put on a realistic footing now.” The pages were a reaction to the story in Germany today, the apparent widespread spying of US intelligence service on Germans, up to and including the cell phone of Chancellor Angela Merkel. In the pieces, German Foreign intelligence denies the oft stated notion in US political circles that spying on world leaders is standard practice.

“There is no telecommunications surveillance from the German embassy in Washington,” they quote Gerhard Schindler, president of German foreign intelligence, saying. Heinrich Wefing, a political editor at Die Zeit, writes a piece headlined ‘Der Bruch’ (or ‘The Split’) and notes that the problems between the two nations go far beyond current tensions.

He writes that the old adage “whatever happens in America will reach Europe 10 years later” has changed its meaning. His piece is a brutal critique of modern America: “In the past, it sounded like a promise. Today it sounds like a threat. What are the things we would like to take over from the Americans, apart from a few brilliant TV series, their friendly casualness in dealing with each other and Silicon Valley?”

“Their cars? Their health system? Their dysfunctional political system? Their schools? Their debt? The deep social and ideological rift?” And he goes on to note: “Probably for the first time since 1945 Germany looks at the United States with a feeling of political, economic and moral superiority: We can do this better and we are better.”

As Jay Taylor notes, we must first admit we’ve been conned. Then we absolutely must take steps to protect ourselves from the geo-political disaster to come. Of course the masses of people don’t get it, they don’t believe it. They’re content to take at face value what they’re told by the mainstream media. What people really have to understand is that the manipulation is systemic. Just by being in the system and holding dollars you are being taken advantage of. You need to get as much as possible outside of the system.

And one way to reduce the systemic risk is to trade those fiat dollars… which are really worthless… they have nothing of intrinsic value… they are really just a con game… They need to exchange those dollars for gold and silver, real estate, diamonds… I would say other things that have tangible value, that no matter what the currency does, you still have possession and ownership of those assets.

The fact of the matter is that when this goes down – and it will – tens of millions of Americans are going to be hit with a financial sledgehammer unlike they have ever felt before. There is no hope for the majority of these people. They don’t believe it can happen, you won’t convince them, and they are doing nothing to prepare and insulate themselves for when it does. It will happen quickly; very quickly!

Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the former bishop of Rochester, said proposals to make Britain the first non-Muslim country to sell a bond that complies with sharia could trigger a series of “unforeseen consequences”.

He also voiced broader fears that Christianity was being increasingly excluded from the administration of law, after one of Britain’s most senior judges said members of the judiciary were “secular” figures serving a “multicultural community”.

Last week the Prime Minister set out plans for Britain to issue a sukuk, a form of debt that is in line with Islamic law, because it avoids the prohibited use of “riba”, or interest. The bonds, which will be worth around £200 million, would pay a fixed return based on the profit generated by an underlying asset, such as government buildings.

"France, Italy, and Spain should together pound their fists on the table, but they are not doing so because they delude themselves that they can go it alone," he told Quotidiano Nazionale. Should Germany persist in imposing its contractionary ruin on Europe – "should the euro break apart, with one exchange rate in the North and one in the South", as he puts it – Germany itself will reap as it has sown.

"Their exchange rate will double and they will not sell a single Mercedes in Europe. German industrialists know this but all they manage to secure are slight changes, not enough to end the crisis." Professor Prodi is the prime minister who prepared Italy for EMU in the 1990s, and then presided over the launch of the euro as European Commission chief.

He rightly warns that nothing of substance will change as a result of the Bundestag elections. "German public opinion is by now convinced that any economic stimulus for the European economy is an unjustified help for the 'feckless' South, to which I have the honour of belonging. They are obsessed with inflation, just like teenagers obsessed with sex. They don't understand that the real problem today is deflation, as I have been saying for a year," he said.

Shares in Givot Olam, an Israeli oil exploration company, rallied on reports that it had located much larger oil reserves at its Meged 5 site than previously estimated. The company, which says it has already sold $40 million worth of oil since the Meged field went operational in 2011, now believes that the well is sitting on exploitable reserves of as much as 3.53 billion barrels - about a seventh of Qatar's proven oil reserves.

Only one cloud looms on the horizon. It is unclear how much of this new-found oil wealth actually belongs to Israel. The well sits on the so-called Green Line, the armistice line of 1948 that formally separates Israel from the occupied Palestinian territories.

He told business leaders at the CBI conference in London that one of the problems with the EU is that Britons voted in the 1970s to join a Common market. Yet since then the EU had expanded into a quasi state – and the British public had never been asked if it agreed to remain a member. He said: “It is my judgment that our current consent of remaining inside the EU is wafer-thin – we have not made the argument enough about why Europe matters.”

He added: “Be in no doubt that in the end you cannot stay in these organisations, give up quite a bit of your national sovereignty, unless you take the British people with you. The British people were told about a Common market, about an economic area, so much has changed about this organisation and so little consent has been granted.”

“It is time to make those arguments, seek that consent and as Prime Minister of this country that is exactly what I am going to do.” But he said there were “lots of things in the European Union that badly needs reform. It is too costly, it is not flexible enough, and it does not help our competitiveness enough, it needs to change.”

One area where competition has become an unquestionable necessity is among the firms vying for our personal finances. Without the threat posed by a competitor, it seems, banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions are quite happy to provide shoddy service and miserly products.

Everyone from campaigners such as Which? and Martin Lewis to peers in the House of Lords has called for improved standards at banks. Over the past decade, these monolithic organisations have racked up multibillion-pound profits while presiding over a cataclysmic financial crisis and multiple mis-selling scandals.

So, as I have chronicled in recent weeks, I took the plunge and gave the new seven-day switching service a test in late September. I am sorry to report that it has failed somewhat miserably. Not only did the “seven days” promised turn into 20, but one of my direct debits was cancelled on moving from HSBC to First Direct – even though the two banks are owned by the same group.

A blocked credit card, missed bill payment and several charges appeared on my account. It took much effort to right these wrongs, including an infuriating call to HSBC’s foreign call centre, which gave an incorrect explanation of the root cause. Sounds all too familiar, doesn’t it?

"People have really gotten comfortable sharing more information and different kinds." Riiight. Little did we know that by that time, Facebook (along with Google, Microsoft, etc) was already collaborating with the National Security Agency's PRISM program that swept up personal data on vast numbers of internet users.

In light of what we know now, Zuckerberg's high-hat act has a bit of a creepy feel, like that guy who told you he was a documentary photographer, but turned out to be a Peeping Tom. But perhaps we shouldn't be surprised: At the core of Facebook's business model is the notion that our personal information is not, well, ours. And much like the NSA, no matter how often it's told to stop using data in ways we didn't authorize, it just won't quit.

Not long after Zuckerberg's "evolving norm" dodge, Facebook had to promise the feds it would stop doing things like putting your picture in ads targeted at your "friends"; that promise lasted only until this past summer, when it suddenly "clarified" its right to do with your (and your kids') photos whatever it sees fit.

And just this week, Facebook analytics chief Ken Rudin told the Wall Street Journal that the company is experimenting with new ways to suck up your data, such as "how long a user's cursor hovers over a certain part of its website, or whether a user's newsfeed is visible at a given moment on the screen of his or her mobile phone."

But beyond all the Friends and Hangouts and Favorites, there's cold, hard cash, and, as they say on Sand Hill Road, when the product is free, you are the product. It's your data that makes Facebook worth $100 billion and Google $300 billion. It's your data that info-mining companies like Acxiom and Datalogix package, repackage, sift, and sell. And it's your data that, as we've now learned, tech giants also pass along to the government.

On Monday, a gunman opened fire at New Jersey's Garden State Plaza. The suspected shooter killed himself before anyone else was hurt. That incident, coupled with the September terrorist attacks in Nairobi that left more than 60 people dead, may have stirred up questions among shoppers about how safe it is to head to a shopping center.

People are taking fewer trips to the mall as it is. Overall retail traffic has been trending lower over the past decade, as more shoppers go online. Analytics firm ShopperTrak predicts retail traffic will decline 1.4 percent this holiday, though founder Bill Martin said it's important to note that the number of unique shoppers has remained relatively flat over the past 14 months. Retailers will need to perform the delicate task of calming concerns without fanning any fears.

Shopping centers take a number of measures to prevent and handle attacks, according to Malachy Kavanagh, vice president of communications and external relations at the International Council of Shopping Centers. Major centers practice evacuation and training drills throughout the year, and perform shooter training drills with police officers, Kavanagh said.

While armed robots have been tested before, these bots are notable for the accuracy of fire and their apparent readiness for combat. These aren’t science fiction or exotic prototypes, but realistic extensions and modifications of existing robotic platforms.

The robots fired at targets 150 meters out. However the effective range of the weapon is 1800 meters. Moreover, the robot can be remotely operated from over 3000 meters away giving a controlling infantry unit an effective radius of about 5000 meters. However, most humans are not very accurate shots at 1500 meters or more. Enter another interesting military technology related video that made the rounds this week, Austin’s TrackingPoint “smart gun”.

The demonstration video shows how this technology allows the gun operator to have essentially “tap and kill” capability where the gun software calculates the correct targeting parameters and fires itself. The eventual evolution and convergence of the two ideas is a mobile remote robotics platform which will employ small arms more effectively than a human soldier which can be remotely controlled by a human operator far away from the battlefield.

The goal is to feed the reflections of the Synod of Bishops, held in October 2014 the "pastoral challenges of the family in the context of evangelization.” The audience remains unclear, but the Conference of the English bishops did not wait for further instructions and could be emulated: it published the online questionnaire to all Catholics, "lay people, priests, seminarians, chaplains, catechists..." Wishing to participate in this groundbreaking survey.

The Bishop of Guyana, he has published the text on the site of his diocese. Since his election, Pope Francis promises a more collegial work and greater participation of the laity in the Catholic institution, it's just too centralized. The extent of selected suggestions shows the ability of the Church to take into account the voice of his people.

Lapid, head of the Yesh Atid party, spoke to Kol Yisrael (Voice of Israel) radio following reports that Israel’s chief negotiator, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, is seeking to offer the PA control over several Jerusalem neighborhoods, as well as joint control over other parts of the capital. The city of Jerusalem will not be divided, Lapid stated.

Jerusalem is the “founding ethos” of the state of Israel, and must remain Israeli, he explained. The PA must come to terms with this, he continued, saying, “If the Palestinians want a state, they need to know there’s a price for that. They won’t get everything they want.”

Earlier, Minister Gilad Erdan expressed a slightly different take on things in an interview with Kol Yisrael. Erdan said he was not surprised to hear that Israeli and PA negotiators were discussing the status of Jerusalem, and pointed out that government leaders had stated prior to talks that no issue would be left off the table.

However, like Lapid, Erdan expressed belief that Jerusalem will remain a united city under Israeli sovereignty. The PA has insisted on receiving all land east of the 1949 armistice line, including the eastern part of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount – Judaism’s most sacred site.

Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader, said the speculation was unhelpful and de-stabilising to both the workforce and their families. She described the workforce on the Clyde as highly professional, motivated and loyal, and said they deserved clear answers.

A BAE spokesman said the company was working closely with the Ministry of Defence to “explore all possible options to determine how best to sustain the capability to deliver complex warships in the UK in the future”.

Hugh Scullion, general secretary of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions (CSEU), said the union would hold talks with senior BAE Systems executives early next week to "examine the business case of the forthcoming announcement".

Speculation over Govan’s future mounted last weekend after it emerged that five cranes at the yard were being decommissioned, although BAE said the decision was not related to its maritime review.

Two other BAE shipyards in Govan and Scotsoun on the Clyde in Scotland are expected to remain open and continue shipbuilding, in what is being seen as a victory for Alex Salmond.

The Royal Navy has never commissioned a warship from a shipyard outside the UK and sources say that the Portsmouth site could be restarted if there is a "yes" vote in Scotland in ten months time to ensure that this continues to be the case.

Downing Street sources confirmed that the Portsmouth yard will close "by and large" with a few functions being retained. "The future of Royal Navy shipbuilding will be Clyde based," they said.

“We will discuss this question next week,” said EU economics chief Olli Rehn after releasing the commission’s Autumn report. The text said Germany’s current account surplus will remain far above tolerable levels into the middle of the decade.

Mr Rehn said Berlin had been told by EU leaders at a summit in June that Germany has a duty to help boost demand and “create sustained conditions” for German wage rises. This would help rebalance the EMU system and lift pressure off the crisis states in the South.

The report said Germany’s surplus will narrow slightly from 7 percent of GDP this year to 6.6 percent in 2014 and 6.4 percent in 2015, but this still breaches the EU’s new “macro-imbalances” rules. It could ultimately lead to sanctions, with a vote taken by a qualified majority of EU states. Such a dispute would in effect be a court of judgment on Germany by EU peers.

While a confrontation is unlikely, the tougher talk from Brussels raises the political temperature in Europe. An attempt to indict Germany would prompt fury in Berlin, where politicians rejected US criticism last week that the country was acting as a free-rider on scarce global demand and creating a “deflationary bias” for the whole world. Berlin has called such attacks “incomprehensible”, insisting that export success helps the whole of Europe and should be prized.