"Italy is faced with formidable challenges," Mr Rehn told Italian lawmakers during a visit to Rome. "The new government needs to deliver on fiscal consolidation and adopt bold measures to re-launch growth," he said. ''Full and effective implementation will be key," he said, adding: "It would be essential to give strong signals to citizens and markets with a clear and ambitious roadmap for reform and an ambitious timeline."

In its bond auction, Italy was forced to pay a rate of 6.504% on bonds due in six months and 7.814% on bonds due in two years - dangerous levels that analysts say could drive Italy insolvent within months.

The melee began shortly after 10:20 pm Thursday as shoppers prowling for Black Friday deals were let inside the store. The suspect began shooting the pepper spray when the coverings of items she wanted were removed, according to police. "Somehow she was trying to use [the pepper spray] to gain an upper hand," police Lieutenant Abel Parga said.

Witnesses described the frenzied scene to the Los Angeles Times, detailing how shoppers-gone-wild tore down video game displays, trampled merchandise and shoved each other for the deeply-discounted goods. "People started screaming, pulling and pushing each other, and then the whole area filled up with pepper spray," Alejandra Seminario, 24, told the newspaper.

Chaos also erupted at a Fayetteville, North Carolina mall after gunfire erupted. Police are looking for two suspects. Luckily no one was injured. Wal-Mart came under the microscope on Black Friday in 2008, when a store employee died after a mob of frenzied shoppers smashed through a Long Island store front and trampled the worker to death. Despite the mahem in Los Angeles, the store remained opened and those not affected by the pepper spray continued to hunt for bargains.

"I don't care," Nakeasha Contreras, a 20 year old who arrived after the incident, told the Times. "I'm still getting my TV."

The rate for two-year borrowing was 7.814%, up from 4.628% last time. The Bank of Italy stressed that demand for the bonds had been high, with demand for the debts outstripping supply by 50%. "The pricing is awful," said Padhraic Garvey, rate strategist at ING. "The object of the exercise this morning was to get the job done and they've done that, but that's about the only positive thing to say." The FTSE MIB in Milan dropped 1% following the auction, to take it down 1.9% on the day, underperforming the rest of Europe, where the London, Paris and Frankfurt's benchmark indexes were all down by about 0.5% on the day. The Italian government's implied cost of borrowing, based on the price at which its debts are traded on financial markets, has risen steadily over the last few weeks to levels seen as unsustainable in the long-term.

However, it is only when the government raises new money at debt auctions, such as those held on Friday, that it is forced to actually pay the higher rates on its debts. Italy plans to sell another 8 billion euros at an auction on Tuesday. "Ahead lies either the slow disintegration of the euro area or a significant strengthening of the monetary union," Monetary Affairs Commissioner Mr Rehn told journalists on Thursday.

The latest wave of protests has led to the worst violence since the fall of President Hosni Mubarak in February. More than 40 people have been killed. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Scaf) is overseeing a transition to civilian rule. Despite promises by the council to speed up the process, some protesters fear it intends to cling to power. They want military rule to end before parliamentary elections are held. Yet many Egyptians want the polls to go ahead as planned. One influential group, the Muslim Brotherhood - which is expected to do well in the vote - is not supporting the Tahrir Square protests.

A large rival demonstration in favour of the elections is taking place near the interior ministry building, with people there chanting that they are the "real Egypt". In Washington, the White House said power in Egypt should be transferred to civilians "as soon as possible". "The United States strongly believes that the new Egyptian government must be empowered with real authority immediately," a White House statement said.

Sunni Islam's highest authority, the grand imam of Cairo's al-Azhar mosque, sent the protesters a rare message of support. An aide, Hassan Shafie, was shown on local TV telling the crowd on Tahrir Square: "The grand imam backs you and is praying for your victory." The Tahrir Square rally follows Friday prayers as well as a week of protests.

But not in the open market, and not even to natural buyers of physical like Sprott and everyone else not infatuated with voodoo theories of infinite repoability of debt. They sold it to the German ministry of Finance... to mint commemorative coins. Coins which we are now confident will be promptly mopped up by the general public.

Following the sale Germany will be left with a modest 109,194,000 troy ounces, enough to allow the country to gladly tell Europe to do some anatomically impossible things and to fall back to a hard asset backed currency if and when it should so desire.

The Bundesbank spokesman told Dow Jones Newswires that all gold sold by the Bundesbank since 2004 had been only for the minting of commemorative coins. Germany is the world's second-largest official gold holder, with about 71% of its foreign reserves held in bullion, according to the World Gold Council.

Instead, the maximum increase is likely to be no more than 2.6 degrees celsius, they added, and the best guess 2.3 degrees celsius. Writing in the journal Science, Andreas Schmittner of Oregon State University said he and colleagues studied how changes in carbon dioxide levels during the last ice age affected temperature.

This allowed them to extrapolate how today's temperature will rise with carbon dioxide.

'The results imply less probability of extreme climatic change than previously thought,' said the US government-funded scientists. Dr Schmittner said it would be 'virtually impossible' for a doubling of carbon dioxide to cause temperatures to rise by 8-10 degrees celsius. Governments should still be tackling global warming, he said, but they have more time to get it right.

Groesbeck Mayor Jackie Livingston said the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department told town officials at a City Council meeting late Monday they could run the line through Fort Parker State Park. But she said construction on the line would not begin until the written contract is received, which should take less than a week.

Towns throughout Texas have been struggling with dwindling reservoirs and water resources as a historic drought parches the state. Livingston said the town of 6,500 people about 100 miles south of Dallas normally draws water from a nearby river. The river, however, has run dry and the town has purchased a four-month supply of water from a rock quarry seven miles away. The pipeline would bring the quarry water to the town's water treatment facility.

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department regional director Rodney Franklin confirmed the agency had given Groesbeck the green light for the project. He said he is not aware of any other water pipelines running through state parks in Texas. The parks department gave approval for the project after ensuring wildlife and native plants would not be harmed.

"This was a special circumstance where we definitely wanted to help our neighbors out," Franklin said, noting that agency officials changed schedules and rushed through the procedure to get emergency approval for the project. "This drought is affecting a lot of folks."

The architects' vision of Europe is a striking building made of glass on the outside and exotic woods on the inside. It will have a restaurant on the roof, where the powerful can stretch their legs, sip their Kir Royals and enjoy the expansive view of the continent they rule. At night, the large glass cube will glow like a giant lantern.

The new European Council building on Rue de la Loi in Brussels will cost 300 million euros ($405 million) to build, or about as much as Greece receives from the EU in a single month. The cranes have been in place for some time. In Brussels, all important buildings have important names. This one will be called "Europa," and it could be finished by 2014. At the euro rescue summit in June, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy placed the glossy brochures for the futuristic building on the desks of European leaders, as if to emphasize that there was also a positive item on the meeting's agenda. But it got him nothing but trouble.

British Prime Minister David Cameron was "immensely frustrated" at the sight of the symbol of European power. "You do wonder whether these institutions actually get what every country, what every member of the public, is having to go through as we cut budgets and try to make our finances add up," Cameron said.

Because of such qualms, the group of European heads of state and government decided that the new Europa building will no longer be mentioned in official documents for the time being. The protagonists of European unification, the project of the century for peace, freedom and prosperity, are taking cover. The fate of the euro and of countries that are in deep financial difficulties hangs in the balance.

"The idea is simple, hit the corporations that corrupt and control American politics where it hurts, their profits," the group's Facebook page reads, describing Black Friday as the "one day where the mega-corporations blatantly dictate our actions." But retailers, who are monitoring the mini-movement, warn that a blanket boycott could end up hurting local communities. "Retailers, regardless of their size, are an important part of the community, and they employ friends and neighbors of that community across the country," said Joseph LaRocca, a senior adviser to the National Retail Federation specializing in loss prevention.

He said retailers have security plans in place and will "work through" any protests and disruptions that occur this weekend. While warning that boycotts could hurt workers, LaRocca said that retailers are preparing for a "very busy day" and weekend, and that it doesn't yet appear the Occupy Black Friday push will turn into a massive boycott. As of Tuesday afternoon, the group's Facebook page had about 1,250 supporters. Brian Dodge, spokesman with the Retail Industry Leaders Association, said his group is monitoring the protest to see whether it grows in popularity going into the weekend.

"At this point, we're not sure what kind of impact it will have," he said. "Retailers, they prepare for lots of contingencies every day and certainly on Black Friday."

"If everyone were to just start buying local, or American more jobs would be created here helping the US economy rather than creating mass jobs in other countries that these huge retailers use for cheap manufacturing," Boicourt wrote in an email to FoxNews.com.

Angela Merkel's response could hardly have been clearer. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso on Wednesday presented a study outlining the possible forms euro bonds could take - whereupon the German chancellor found unusually unambiguous words in response. The proposal, she said, was "extraordinarily distressing." She also called it "inappropriate."

The reaction was unusually firm for Merkel. She has become notorious in Germany for shying away from positions that can't be wriggled out of later. But when it comes to pooling the debt of all euro-zone member states in the form of euro bonds, she has long been firm in her rejection. In December 2010, for example, she said "the euro zone needs more harmony and competitiveness rather than common euro-zone bonds." In September, she called euro bonds "absolutely wrong." Wednesday's outburst, in other words, should not come as a surprise.

Merkel, though, remains convinced that euro-zone leaders must keep the pressure on in order to ensure that debt-laden countries institute the austerity programs necessary to begin bringing debt levels down. That, she never tires of intoning, is the only thing that will convince markets in the long term that the euro zone can survive. As such, she prefers that European Union treaties be changed to allow for greater integration of euro-zone countries - a position she repeated on Wednesday in response to Barroso's euro bond proposal and again on Thursday following the meeting with Sarkozy.

Specifically, she wants clear consequences to be anchored in the Lisbon Treaty should a euro-zone member state fall afoul of EU debt rules. "We have to take steps toward the creation of a fiscal union," Merkel said on Thursday in Strasbourg. Those that violate the EU's Stability and Growth Pact must "be taken to task." She and Sarkozy said that they would be presenting a proposal for possible amendments to the Lisbon Treaty in the coming days.

Dorsey says business has been brisk since the spring uprisings in the middle east, as customers share concerns about political uprisings, the world economy and the future of the United States. "I've had people in here that are very wealthy and they've spent thousands of dollars just on backpacks that they fill with survival gear, one for each person of their family," Dorsey said, "And something where they can just grab a bag and get out of Dodge."

Dorsey says some customers talk of stocking up on freeze-dried meals for the home, while others confide they are stashing supplies at a remote location away from the city where they would go in an emergency. "There are people that have property and they've set up different things they're building to protect themselves like towers they can stand up and watch," Dorsey said, "There's a lot of people I'm dealing with who buy all kinds of stuff because they have like twenty or thirty people going in on this together and they're all going to go to this one spot if something like this happens."

Uncle Sam's Safari Outfitters in Webster does not sell guns, but Dorsey also reports many customers who do not own a gun are asking where they could go to buy one. "I think people are scared. They don't know where this country is going. They think we're on a downward spiral with just dramatic, crazy spending. People just don't know what's going to happen," Dorsey said.

Brandon said he doesn't remember anything until he woke up on the theater floor, but Kelly said he was, "convulsing, snorting, trying to breathe. He scared me big time," she added. Paramedics transported the man to the emergency room and the theater had to cancel the rest of the movie for that showing.

Several reports on internet movie sites show reports of other people suffering similar symptoms during the same scene, which contains flashes of red, black and white. Dr Michael G Chez, the medical director of pediatric neurology and epilepsy for Sutter Sacramento, said the reports indicate the scene may be triggering an episode of photosensitive epilepsy.

While rare, the condition can be triggered by flashing red lights in people who are genetically predisposed. "It's like a light switch going off, because it hits your brain all at once," Dr Chez said. Similar reports resulted after a 1990s episode of the television show Pokemon, which triggered seizures in children. Manufacturers have revamped modern television and video games so screens don't project the dangerous light frequency, Dr Chez said. "The trouble with theaters, it's dark, the lights flashing in there is more like a strobe light," he added.

The leaders of the three largest economies in the eurozone met in Strasbourg earlier, in an attempt to resolve the ongoing turmoil. The markets have continued to struggle, destabilising other world economies and both Merkel and Sarkozy have faced criticism about their failure to reach a solution. Speaking after meeting with the German Chancellor and Italian Premier Mario Monti, Sarkozy said "propositions for the modification of treaties" would be presented in the coming days.

He wouldn't elaborate on what these changes may be but said they would be ready in time for the next EU leaders summit on December 9. Treaty changes are a notoriously laborious endeavor, requiring the agreement of all 27 EU nations, including non-euro countries such as Britain and Poland. Merkel said the treaty changes would "make clear that we must take steps toward a fiscal union to express the conviction that we know policies must be more closely coordinated if you have a common, stable currency. It is political confidence in Europe that has been lost - we can only win it back politically," Merkel said.

This was the first meeting of the three leaders since Monti took over last week following mounting market concerns over Italy's huge debt, which stand at 1.9 trillion euros ($2.6 trillion), or a huge 120 percent of economic output. Europe's current anti-crisis measures are not big enough to deal with Italy's debt mountain. Sarkozy said the three leaders had agreed to meet again "very soon" in Rome at Monti's invitation to continue their three-way dialogue.

The meeting in Strasbourg, France, comes amid signs that even Germany and France - the eurozone's two biggest economies - are not immune from the crisis that's already seen three relatively small countries bailed out. All three leaders said they would do what it takes to stabilize the situation and save the euro. "We want the euro, we want a strong, stable euro... we will do everything to defend it," Merkel said.

"The country's large fiscal imbalances, high indebtedness across all sectors, and adverse macroeconomic outlook mean the sovereign's credit profile is no longer consistent with an investment-grade rating," Fitch said in a news release. The ratings firm said recession will make the government's deficit-cutting plan more challenging and will hurt bank asset quality, but that the government's commitment to the plan was "strong." The Portugal PSI 20 index is up 0.2% to 5,241.26, underperforming other European stock markets.

His words were immediately seized upon by those wondering where the German pope stood on a recent Vatican document that proposed the creation of a world political authority to regulate financial markets and rein in the "inequalities and distortions of capitalist development." In short, it seemed the pope was speaking the same language as the document's authors.

In his own document unveiled during the November 18-20 trip to Benin, the pope asked all members of the church to "work and speak out in favor of an economy that cares for the poor and is resolutely opposed to an unjust order which, under the pretext of reducing poverty, has often helped to aggravate it." He specifically denounced business groups that exploit African resources and leave local populations impoverished.

All of this seemed to echo the tone of the 41-page text on global financial reform released in late October by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.