Compiled by LAURA SLATTERY

STATUS UPDATE

Sofa vacancy: Ireland AMpresenter Sinéad Desmond is among the names being linked with ITV breakfast show Daybreak after it sacked its star transfer signings Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley.

The future is now:Guardian News Media is selling ContentNext, owner of the paidContent.org news site devoted to the future of journalism.

Twitter backfire:A Qantas social media competition asking people to describe a #QantasLuxury flight attracted angry definitions from Twitter users whose flights it recently grounded.

37.4- Average degrees of separation between any one Facebook user and another, according to its data scientist Lars Backstrom and University of Milan researchers. This is why it's so hard to avoid your ex.

PRODUCT WATCH: PEPPER SPRAY

Today is “Black Friday” – the traditional US discount day after Thanksgiving when retailers lure in shoppers with cut-price deals. But will those deals include special offers on pepper spray at Amazon.com?

A version of the First Defense pepper spray used by a UC Davis campus police officer against a row of seated protesting students is available to buy on the site, online news site Mashable reported this week. Charmingly, the Amazon version has 1.3 per cent major capsaicinoids – the active ingredient that makes eyes sting, noses run and faces burn – compared to a 0.7 per cent active ingredient content in the one used on the Californian campus.

Overzealous security officers are not, in fact, the target market for most pepper sprays – many are branded pink and sold alongside “panic rape emergency” personal alarm keychains to ward off other campus tyrannies.

1000/1- Odds being quoted by Paddy Power on the chance of the currency of Ireland four years from now being "none (barter system)".

AD SPACE

The key sentence in the Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland’s upholding of 82 complaints against Largo Foods for choosing to market a crisp brand with images of womens breasts, is perhaps this one: “The advertisers did not provide a response.”

They didn’t need to, as Largo is not a member of the ASAI. Planet Business finds that since Largo has drawn the attention of adult road users to the parallels between a woman’s breast and a lunchtime snack, the taste of these particular crinkle crisps, as well as those of its Largo stable mates, has soured a great deal. But this appears to be the minority view.

According to Largo boss Ray Coyle, sales of the brand – once something of an also-ran – have increased 7 per cent, while the awards and nominations have come almost as thick and fast as the despair.

"It was not ideal circumstances. I was dressed as a cannibal at the time"- Hugh Grant tells the Leveson inquiry into phone hacking by the British media how he was filming on location in Germany when he was obliged to issue a press release confirming the birth of his child.

DICTIONARY CORNER: CRISIS-BYSTANDERS

With so much contagion in the global economy, it’s hard to remember who infected who. But the International Monetary Fund clearly has its take on which countries are guilty of being the source of the problem and which are merely innocent bystanders. It has floated the idea of introducing a precautionary liquidity line that would act as insurance against future shocks. This, it said, might address the needs of “members with sound policies and fundamentals, including those affected during periods of heightened economic or market stress – the crisis-bystanders”.

In social psychology circles, “bystander theory” posits that the greater the number of people there are present at an emergency, the less likely it is that one of them will help. Does the IMF’s phraseology suggest that this theory can be applied to European politics? And which are the bystander countries anyway?