Today, half of the world’s 30 fastest-growing countries are in Africa, which is quickly losing its image of hopelessness and despair. Unfortunately, economic growth, while significant, rarely benefits the impoverished majority, even amid scenes of bustling business taking place from Dakar to Nairobi, and statistics indicating an emerging African middle class of some 150 million – which could quickly rise to 300 million by 2015, barring any ‘black swan’ events.

Politically, there is optimism as almost all 55 African countries have some kind of constitution with an active civil society that is contributing to more democratic or pluralistic political engagement. The continent’s two longest lasting internal conflicts (Somalia and Congo) persist; even if at a lower intensity, while two newer ones (Mali, Central African Republic) continue unabated.

However, considering that from 1998-2003, the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo and its neighbors left some three million dead, the 2,000 registered ‘military’ deaths recorded in 2013 suggests that 2014 could be one of Africa’s most peaceful in recent history.

The federal government says its offices in the Washington area will be closed on Tuesday due to the winter storm bearing down on the mid-Atlantic and northeastern US. The Office of Personnel Management says non-emergency personnel in and around the District of Columbia are granted excused absences for the day. Emergency employees and telework-ready employees are expected to work.

The National Weather Service predicts Washington could get between 4 and 8 inches of snow on Tuesday, with higher amounts north of the nation's capital. Forecasts expect that coastal regions will be hit harder than inland areas with the storm crippling travel at airports, on trains and by car. While the winter blast is expected to be gone by Thursday, meteorologists predict it'll be followed by another blast of cold air pushing down from Canada on Friday or Saturday. Snow is possible as far south as Greenville, South Carolina and Raleigh, North Carolina on Tuesday as the extent of the precipitation hits its peak into the afternoon and later.

While spared from the bitter winter chills, the Southwest and much of California remained in the midst of one of the worst droughts in history. Paired with record heat, the conditions have also helped lead to a ring of fierce wildfires around Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles County Fire Department said the fire was 78 percent contained by Sunday, with full containment expected Wednesday. The California Conference of Catholic Bishops asked people of all faiths to join in prayers for rain. Sacramento Bishop Jaime Soto, president of the bishops' conference, suggested a prayer for God to 'open the heavens and let His mercy rain down upon our fields and mountains.'

They are planning this approval despite the fact that use of this herbicide is associated with increased rates of deadly immune system cancers, Parkinson’s disease, endocrine disruption, birth defects, and many other serious kinds of illness and reproductive problems.

Weed ecologists are unanimous in warning that approval of these crops will lead to vast increases in the use of this poisonous chemical. Researchers at Penn State say that in soybeans alone, planting of crops resistant to 2,4-D would increase the amount of 2,4-D sprayed on American fields to 100 million pounds per year — four times the current level.

A coalition of 144 farming, fishery, environmental and public health groups have asked the USDA not to approve the 2,4-D resistant crops. Citing studies that predict dire consequences to both human and environmental health, they add the concern among farmers that 2,4-D would drift onto their property and kill their crops, causing serious economic damage in rural communities.

Numbers aside, this result wasn’t entirely unexpected. “The outcome was never really in doubt: No major political faction was pushing a ‘no’ vote, and many Egyptians saw approving the constitution as a key first step towards restoring stability after the army overthrew President Mohamed Morsi in July.”

However, last month the military-backed government led by General Abdel Fattah Sisi, who is possibly planning a run for president, outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, the party of deposed leader Mohamed Morsi and the main political opposition in the country. Others yet were dismayed by the relative low turnout – some 38.6 percent of 53 million eligible voters – which belied the statistical enthusiasm of the results.

British Islands-based private equity firm SRE Minerals Limited announced the study results in December, along with a 25-year deal to develop the deposits in Jongju, northwest of the capital, Pyongyang. The joint venture, called Pacific Century Rare Earth Mineral Limited, is with state-owned Korea Natural Resources Trading Corporation. The potential bonanza could offer the isolated and impoverished North a game-changing stake in the rare earths industry.

Scott Bruce, an associate of the East-West Center in Hawaii, said the deposits could not only shake China's hold on the market but also improve relations with Japan and South Korea, two of the biggest importers of the minerals.

China's near monopoly on rare earths, 90 percent of the world market, led prices to skyrocket when Tokyo accused Beijing of capping exports because of political tensions. Prices have since dropped to more sustainable levels, but Beijing's control of the market has spurred a search for other sources.

David Cameron has been given a six-week deadline by rebel Tory MPs to publish a clear plan for clawing back power from Brussels if he is to avoid a “disaster” in the European elections this spring. The Prime Minister must produce a detailed strategy for renegotiating Britain's membership of the EU by the end of next month, ahead of elections for the European Parliament in May, MPs said.

The Sunday Telegraph disclosed last week that 95 backbench Tories were supporting a rebel demand for Parliament be given a new power to veto EU laws in a move which fractured the uneasy peace over Europe between Mr Cameron and his MPs. Now senior figures, including David Davis, Mr Cameron’s former leadership rival, are stepping up their campaign for a tougher policy on the EU.

Many MPs privately believe that Tories will be “hammered” in May’s European Parliament elections and some are even warning that a disastrous result could prompt an attempt to oust Mr Cameron as party leader.

Three years after the Pentagon said it was de-emphasizing Europe in favor of the Asia-Pacific region, Navy Admiral Samuel J Locklear III said this week that US dominance has weakened in the shadow of a more aggressive China. “Our historic dominance that most of us in this room have enjoyed is diminishing, no question,” Admiral Locklear, chief of US Pacific Command, said Wednesday at a naval conference in Virginia.

Although Admiral Locklear said it is obvious that Chinese military power is growing, he suggested that it is unclear whether China will seek to be a hard adversary to the US in the long term, so Washington should be working overtime on steering Beijing toward a cooperative security posture. “China is going to rise, we all know that,” Admiral Locklear said, as reported by Defense News, which included several quotes from his speech at the annual Surface Navy Association meeting.

Also, the number of residents 65 and older will jump by 20.7 percent over the next five years, the report said. State demographers expected Latinos to surpass the non-Hispanic white population seven months earlier, but Latino birth rates were lower than anticipated. Now, officials say, by March Latinos will make up 39 percent of California's population, edging out non-Hispanic whites at 38.8 percent. Nearly 25 years ago, non-Hispanic whites made up 57 percent of the state, while Latinos made up 26 percent.

The state's Department of Finance includes the projections in the governor's budget proposal because of the potential economic impact, such as the increase in retirees affecting the scope of services needed for an aging population, or income disparities among minority groups increasing the need for social or educational programs.

In a strongly worded speech in the European Parliament this morning, UKIP leader Nigel Farage warned that the EU is increasingly being controlled by big business and centralised bureaucracy, stating that the forthcoming European elections would be the battleground to bring back national democracy.

He went on to argue that people don’t want a ‘United States of Europe’ but a Europe of sovereign states trading and working together. Farage also said the European elections would ‘mark a watershed’ in the battle for national democracy.

Bacteria harboring the encoding gene that makes them resistant have been found on every continent except for Antarctica. Tests at two wastewater treatment plants in northern China revealed antibiotic-resistant bacteria — “superbugs” carrying New Delhi Metallo-beta-lactamase (NDM-1), a multidrug-resistant gene first identified in India in 2010 — were not only escaping purification but also breeding and spreading their dangerous cargo.

NDM-1 is able to make such common bacteria as E-coli, salmonella, and K pneumonias resistant to even the strongest available antibiotics. Tests at two wastewater treatment plants in northern China revealed antibiotic-resistant bacteria were not only escaping purification but also breeding and spreading their dangerous cargo.

The study, led by Rice University environmental engineer Pedro Alvarez, appeared this month in the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters. “It’s scary,” Alvarez said. “There’s no antibiotic that can kill them. We only realized they exist just a little while ago when a Swedish man got infected in India, in New Delhi. Now, people are beginning to realize that more and more tourists trying to go to the upper waters of the Ganges River are getting these infections that cannot be treated.”

The figures, scheduled for release at 9 am tomorrow in Washington, were inadvertently posted on the Treasury’s website. Japan’s holdings rose $12 billion to $1.186 trillion, the figures showed.

China’s swelling foreign-exchange reserves, reported today to have reached a world record $3.82 trillion at the end of December, may sustain the nation’s appetite for US debt. Capital inflows and intervention to limit gains in the yuan have contributed to China building up currency holdings that are a third of the global total.

This is being hailed as the first home appliance "botnet" and the first cyberattack from the Internet of Things. A botnet is a series of computers that seem to be ordinary computers functioning in people's homes and businesses, but are really secretly controlled by hackers.

The Internet of Things, is a new term in the tech industry that refers to a concept where every device in your house gets its own computer chip, software, and connection to the Internet: your fridge, thermostat, smart water meter, door locks, etc.To a hacker, they all become computers that can be hacked and controlled.

In this case, hackers broke into more than 100,000 everyday consumer gadgets, such as home-networking routers, connected multi-media centers, televisions, and at least one refrigerator, Proofpoint says. They then used those objects to send more than 750,000 malicious emails to enterprises and individuals worldwide.

It’s triggered by the recent spending bill passed by Congress – all 1, 582 pages of it. Wouldn’t you think that before authorizing something so massive that our members of Congress would have read it? Or at the very least, have hired someone to read it and summarize it for them? Nope.

According to one very amused congressman, Earl Blumenauer (Democrat for Oregon) nobody read this massive bill. Trust me, this is really funny. You’ll laugh too.

On Capitol Hill on Thursday, CNSNews.com asked Blumenauer: “The omnibus bill yesterday, it was 1,582 pages, did you have a chance to read all the pages before voting on it?” Blumenauer laughed and said: “Nobody did!” “Nobody did?” said the CNSNews.com reporter. “Nope,” said Blumenauer.

This isn’t even “corruption.” It goes way beyond that. This is our elected representatives giving us the middle finger and then laughing about it. Because it’s all a big joke to them. They make salaries most of us can only dream about earning and they don’t even have enough respect for those of us who put them into office to, I don’t know, do their jobs!

How much do they make, you ask? Members of Congress are paid $174,000 per year for their “service.” Some with special jobs receive more. For Example, House Speaker John Boehner receives $223,500.

Then, of course, there is a budget for each office. Are you sitting down?

Each office budgets between $1.27 million to $1.546 million. Congress has 535 members. So at the minimum, $679,450,000 is paid to run the offices of these people who do not care enough to read the bills that they are voting on… in our best interests, of course. Almost $700 million dollars is spent on staffing and office expenses, and no one had time to read a bill before voting ‘yes’ and signing it into law.

The second came from London where the UK government once again revealed its views of a united Europe through a rather hysterical reaction to the recent lifting of restrictions for Romanian and Bulgarian workers. The UK’s response, which was strongly criticised by many in Brussels, did not come as a surprise.

Regardless of the fact that the British reaction is narrow minded and only seems to be playing into the hands of the Eurosceptics, the fact is that the UK has always had a rather different idea about Europe.

Just as the French socialist politician and self-proclaimed Europeanist, Michel Rocard, stressed in his 2008 book titled “Oui à la Turquie”, the UK was always of a different view regarding the future of Europe.

“I realised”, wrote Rocard, “that the project of a federal Europe died in 1972 after the adhesion of the UK”. In his opinion, Great Britain has diligently pushed back on all possible enlargements, blocking any acceleration of integration. What the UK really wants is a free community of customs and trade and not a Unified Europe, according to this French politician.

The UK’s view is in stark contrast to the dream of a United States for Europe.

Wang Min, the party chief of Liaoning province in northeast China where the vessel is reportedly being built, said the carrier’s construction would take six years and added that China’s navy eventually planned to build four such carriers.

Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post estimated that the new carrier, which is being built in the northeastern port of Dalian, would be completed by 2018. Chinese language reports about the carrier’s development were reportedly deleted over the weekend, prompting claims that Beijing had hoped to keep the project “low profile”.

However, military strategists and Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, have made no secret of their desire to see China build a powerful “blue water navy” that will boost the country’s international status and its controls over the seas.