Military hardware will soon consist of "autonomous robots that know neither pity nor fear" — quite a step up from the current generation of UAVs and drones operated by humans from the safety of military bases hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away.

Ever since drones such as the Predator were prepared and armed for use in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s, stealth weapons have played a key role in the West's "War on Terror." It was a Predator drone that located Osama Bin Laden in 2011, and it was a Predator drone that launched the missile attack earlier this month that killed Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud. The drones have clocked more than 200,000 hours of flying time in Afghanistan since their inception.

Drone operators work in a safe environment, sometimes in a completely different country to the one that the aircraft flies in. They make judgment calls based on the situation they see on the computer screen in front of them. The success of the program has meant that the US Air Force is training more people to fly drones than it is conventional aircraft. The legal battle over whether drones such as the Predator and the Reaper contravene international law is still raging.

The basis of the argument against their use is that actions viewed thousands of miles away on a computer screen can be misinterpreted and the response could have severe consequences. That legal battle could get a whole lot tougher with the next generation. Future weapons will remove the human element from the equation completely; they will be able to engage targets by themselves, maximizing destruction. They will represent the age-old saying: "Shoot first, ask questions later."

The 1956 Ladenschlussgesetz still forbids it – but as of 2013 shops may open on designated Sundays throughout the year. Berlin, for example allows ten of these. Sleepy Sundays give you time to recuperate before the week ahead and you can feel guilt-free about doing absolutely nothing.

As Europe's paramount leader, Merkel has been wary of setting up a so-called "united states of Europe," but wants Brussels to have new powers to discipline the governments she blames for dragging down the eurozone. Addressing the parliament - the Bundestag - she criticized wishy-washy promises that governments feel free to break, and the lack of authority in Brussels to impose reforms.

Germany would demand that eurozone nations in future make binding agreements with the European Commission, the EU's executive body, to reform social welfare, labour laws and bureaucracy. "Contractual agreements naturally don't mean that the Commission can prescribe something, but that member nations draft such contractual agreements with the Commission," she said. "National parliaments will have to ratify them, or else they won't be binding."

She said her aim was to establish a "Europe of stability, of growth and naturally of social security." Germany believed it must exercise "responsibility and encourage integration." Merkel was addressing parliament in advance of a European Union summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday.

The cabinet of hawkish Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed to spend 24.7 trillion yen ($240 billion) between 2014 and 2019 in a strategic shift towards the south and west of the country - a five percent boost to the military budget over five years. The shopping list is part of efforts by Abe to normalise the military in Japan, which has been officially pacifist since defeat in World War II. Its well-equipped and highly professional services are limited to a narrowly defined self-defensive role.

It comes with the establishment of a US-style National Security Council that is expected to concentrate greater power in the hands of a smaller number of senior politicians and bureaucrats. Fears are growing in Japan over the rising power of China, with the two countries embroiled in a dispute over the sovereignty of a group of islands in the East China Sea, and the perennial menace posed by an unpredictable North Korea.

The German chancellor also told the US president that America's National Security Agency cannot be trusted because of the volume of material it had allowed to leak to the whistleblower Edward Snowden, according to the New York Times. Livid after learning from Der Spiegel magazine that the Americans were listening in to her personal mobile phone, Merkel confronted Obama with the accusation: "This is like the Stasi."

The newspaper also reported that Merkel was particularly angry that, based on the disclosures, "the NSA clearly couldn't be trusted with private information, because they let Snowden clean them out." Snowden is to testify on the NSA scandal to a European parliament inquiry next month, to the anger of Washington which is pressuring the EU to stop the testimony.

• JPMorgan Chase is roughly the size of the entire British economy.

• Right now, four of the "too big to fail" banks each have total exposure to derivatives that is well in excess of 40 trillion dollars.

• The total exposure that Goldman Sachs has to derivatives contracts is more than 381 times greater than their total assets.

• According to the Bank for International Settlements, the global financial system has a total of 441 trillion dollars worth of exposure to interest rate derivatives.

• The US government has spent an astounding 3.7 trillion dollars on welfare programs over the past five years

• Only 47 percent of all adults in America have a full-time job at this point.

• At this moment, there are 6 million Americans in the 16 to 24-year-old age group that are neither in school or working.

• According to the Social Security Administration, 40 percent of all US workers make less than $20,000 a year.

• Overall, the United States has run a trade deficit of more than 8 trillion dollars with the rest of the world since 1975.

Tom Winsor, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, told the Home Affairs Select Committee “in anything that gets measured” there is an “incentive, resisted by many, to manipulate the process to make your own performance look good”. And Mr Winsor, the first chief inspector of constabulary to come from a non-policing background, disputed evidence given by the chief of the Metropolitan Police, Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, who claimed inspectors lauded his force’s crime data as “competent and reliable”.

His comments come after whistle-blowing police constable James Patrick told the Public Administration Select Committee officers routinely massage crime statistics to boost their forces’ performance figures. Asked by Committee chair Keith Vaz MP if there is manipulation occurring, Mr Winsor, a former rail regulator and lawyer, said: “It is almost certain that some manipulation is going on. The question is where, how much, how severe.”

The findings add to economists’ fears that Britain’s economic recovery is being fuelled by loans, rather than sustainable growth, as families put Christmas spending on credit and bury their heads in the sand. The extent of Britain’s reliance on debt was revealed this week with new figures showing that mortgages, personal loans and lending to small businesses totals more than £1 trillion.

Residents in the UK are more likely to increase spending on Christmas this year, compared with other European nations, according to the 12,000-person survey published today by ING, the Dutch-owned bank.

"Since the Lisbon Treaty we have a situation in Europe where everyone says, 'we can develop everything but we can't change the treaties'", Merkel told parliament. "I don't think that we can build a truly functioning Europe that way." Merkel was addressing the German parliament in her first speech since starting her third term as chancellor the previous day, following her victory in September 22 elections.

She said "we have a situation in Europe where Germany is often accused of resisting certain developments. This is not the case. We are among those who say that we must, if treaties are no longer sufficient, develop those treaties." Merkel added: "I know it can sometimes be difficult for nations to push through treaty changes. But those who want more Europe must be ready for new rules regarding competencies."

Tomorrow's talks in Moscow between Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill as well as Russian Foreign Ministry officials are expected to focus on the ecumenical dialogue with the Patriarchate of Moscow, on preparations for the meeting between the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church and the pope, as well as on continued cooperation with Russia on international issues such as peace in the Middle East.

The cardinal talked about the issues at a conference held in the Russian capital where he arrived on Saturday. "We'll talk about relations between our two churches and how we can enhance joint work," he told reporters, noting that he would be interested in "how the Patriarch assesses the theological dialogue and our ecumenical future."

The situation of Christians in the Middle East will be part of the discussion, a topic that is "dear to the heart" of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Vatican.

Clearly, Mr Putin is not pleased. Yet it is not Moscow that presents the biggest challenge to Ms Merkel’s line on Russia. It will be her new coalition partners in Berlin, the Social Democrats, and in particular the new foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

This is bad news both for Europe and for the United States: Ms Merkel’s tough stance has created a sense of unity inside the European Union toward the Kremlin, and, for once, between Europe and the United States. Any attempt by the Social Democrats to undermine that unity would be exploited by Mr Putin.

Germany’s hard line on Russia isn’t limited to the chancellor’s office. Germany’s president, Joachim Gauck, announced earlier this month that he would not be attending the official opening of the Winter Olympics next year in Sochi, Russia. Although his post is largely ceremonial, the fact that a German president would snub his Russian counterpart signals a major shift between Moscow and Berlin.

“Their blood is mixed. To those who kill, we are Christians. We are united in blood, even though we have not yet managed to take necessary steps towards unity between us and perhaps the time has not yet come. Unity is a gift that we need to ask for. I knew a parish priest in Hamburg who was dealing with the beatification cause of a Catholic priest guillotined by the Nazis for teaching children the catechism. After him, in the list of condemned individuals, was a Lutheran pastor who was killed for the same reason.”

“Their blood was mixed. The parish priest told me he had gone to the bishop and said to him: ‘I will continue to deal with the cause, but both of their causes, not just the Catholic priests.’ This is what ecumenism of blood is. It still exists today; you just need to read the newspapers. Those who kill Christians don’t ask for your identity card to see which Church you were baptized in.”

The only issue here is that most Americans do not own any financial assets. The bulk of the gain has come from the juiced up stock market courtesy of mega Quantitative Easing. Yet at the same time, we have a peak in food stamp usage and the real estate market is largely being driven by Wall Street speculators.

The Fed is creating a modern day Gilded Age that is favoring a very small portion of the population. The vast majority of the population is leveraged into debt with high rates while those with premiere access continue to increase their balance sheets. It is no coincidence that the top 10 percent of households control 75 percent of all wealth in the nation.

This is why sentiment for most households is negative. For the majority to participate in this party they need to go into massive debt yet again to pretend they are still part of the middle class.

The advanced version of the Russian missile has a range of 500 kilometres (310 miles) and could potentially be used to take out ground-based radar and interceptors of the new NATO shield.

The announcement prompted fears in the US and neighbouring states such as Poland. "We've urged Russia to take no steps to destabilize the region," State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said in response, adding the US had also passed on to Moscow its neighbours' concerns.

The dispute exposes a divide between France, which has several military bases abroad and argues that Europe has a responsibility to former colonies in Africa, and countries like Germany that are wary in today's economic times of intervening and spending taxpayer money abroad.

If European countries were to pitch in to such a fund, they would likely want to decide how that money is used. And they might not want France sending its troops to foreign theaters so often, and using the money to fund its own geopolitical ambitions.

French President Francois Hollande defended the Central African Republic intervention Monday, while paying homage to two French soldiers killed in combat amid sectarian violence in the largely lawless country.

If France "weren't there, no other army in this part of the world — Africa — would be able to launch such an operation to save lives and establish peace," Hollande said.