THIS week’s sale of Picasso’s 1955 painting Les Femmes D’Alger for $179.4m may be a temporary high water mark in two of the age’s defining characteristics — consumerism and materialism. It also points to an increasing concentration of wealth.

A DRUG offender with mental health problems who was recently released from jail has killed six people in a shooting spree, including a policewoman.

A man shot dead a sheriff’s deputy in Washington state, then led officers on a car chase in which he killed five other people before turning himself in, police said today.