Cheerio, that's all from the Business Live page for today. Do please join us again on Monday at 06:00.

Although the Sun, Mirror and Metro were the "biggest winners" in terms of Black Friday ad revenue today, overall newspaper advertising revenue has fallen, the Guardian reports, external. Declining newspaper circulations mean ad spend this year was an estimated £4.7m, down from just under £6m in 2014 and £5.8m the year before.

Microsoft's billionaire co-founder Bill Gates will launch a multi-billion-dollar clean energy research and development plan on Monday to coincide with the opening day of the UN climate change summit in Paris, energy publication GreenWire reported.

Mr Gates and a group of countries will agree to double their research and development budgets to boost clean energy deployment and work collaboratively, according to GreenWire, which cited government and business officials familiar with the agreement.

Last year Black Friday sparked an 11% rise in negative reviews on Trustpilot, the website says.

Brazil's federal and state governments plan to sue the owners of the Samarco iron ore miner for 20 billion reais ($5.24bn (£3.5bn) in damages caused by the burst of a tailings pond dam, Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira told reporters. Samarco is a joint venture between the world's largest mining company, BHP Billiton, and the biggest iron ore miner, Vale. 

Image source, AFP

Toxic materials, such as arsenic, were found in the water of the Rio Doce river days after a dam burst at a mine in Brazil earlier this month, an executive for Vale, the co-owner of the mine operator, has confirmed.

Vania Somavilla, sustainability chief at Vale, cited a report by the Institute for Water Management in Minas Gerais, which found levels of arsenic above legal limits. 

Image source, Getty Images

Big firms including Tesco and Ikea have joined forces to call on Prime Minister David Cameron to rethink UK government plans to cut green energy subsidies, saying they pose a risk to business, the FT reports, external.

BT, Marks & Spencer, Vodafone, Nestle, Unilever, and Panasonic also said the changes undermine investor confidence.

"Regular changes to environment policy undermine confidence in investment in infrastructure of all kinds and impact on the UK’s ability to continue competing in the rapidly growing global low-carbon sector,” the companies said in a letter to Mr Cameron.

Image source, Getty Images

Local government minister Greg Clark has written to Lancashire County Council saying he will decide an appeal by Cuadrilla on two rejected fracking permits in Lancashire, raising the prospect of their being pushed through despite local opposition.

"Ministers have decided to recover Cuadrilla's appeals for shale exploration in Lancashire," the government said in a letter to the council.

Cuadrilla's wells in Lancashire would be the first British shale gas wells where fracking is allowed since hydraulic fracturing at a separate project near Blackpool, in Lancashire, triggered an earth tremor that resulted in an 18-month ban on fracking in 2011.

Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged to go all out to extract shale oil and gas reserves, to help offset declining North Sea output.  

The government changed planning rules in August to allow it to intervene in the local planning process to approve or reject shale gas drilling permits and give priority to appeals involving shale gas projects.

Image source, Getty Images

Herve Falciani has been sentenced in absentia by a Swiss court to five years in prison. He was on trial for leaking bank data that led to a worldwide wave of tax evasion probes against prominent clients with accounts in Switzerland. He is in France, and is not expected to be extradited.

Payments processing firm Worldpay has said this year's online sales "will eclipse those of previous years".

Some retailers websites have creaked under the weight of online demand today. John Lewis had a period of around 20 minutes earlier where customers found it difficult to purchase goods due to technical problems with the website, while Argos also had difficulties due to "very high levels of traffic", and had to slow down customer purchases.

Argos said:

And John Lewis said:

Image source, Reuters

Flat screen TVs seem to be a very popular shopping item in Black Friday sales - there were scenes last year of scuffles breaking out between shoppers trying to wrestle them from each other (pictured). It appears the struggle has been taken online this year, with Currys PC World saying it is selling 100 flat screen TVs per minute.

Image source, Getty Images

The Dutch Finance Ministry has said it will appeal against a European Commission ruling ordering it to recover up to €30m in taxes from Starbucks. A ministry statement said that while the Dutch government supports the fight against tax avoidance, it "greatly values its practice of offering certainty in advance," by providing so-called tax rulings to multinational corporations.

Image source, b

The BBC's Maryam Moshiri is at Amazon UK's distribution depot in Hemel Hempstead, one of ten in the UK. She says Black Friday is Amazon's busiest day of the year - 5.5 million items were sold last year - 64 items every second.

A mild winter in the US so far has caused a huge headache for retailers, including Macy's department store in Manhatten. Its chief executive told the BBC's Michelle Fleury that people are finally starting to buy winter boots, and they have far too many winter coats, boots, scarves and hats that people so far have held off from buying.

US Treasuries prices have risen, with benchmark yields hovering at their lowest levels in over three weeks.

Bond prices first rose after a steep sell-off in Chinese equities. There were reports that Chinese stock regulators had widened a probe of brokerages to include the country's fourth-largest securities firm, China Haitong Securities.

US blue-chip shares then slipped after early evidence suggested US shoppers are not rushing out to the shops on Black Friday.