"Tensions are getting very high in this part of the world," the official said. "The security position is extremely severe. There are huge arms sales from Russia, the US and Europe. China's defence spending has seen double-digit growth each year since 1989. They [Beijing] are not a responsible partner. US influence in the region is receding."

Bad blood between Japan and China runs deep and, in the modern era, dates from the 1931 invasion of Manchuria. Following its defeat in 1945 and its adoption of a pacifist constitution, Japan became wholly dependent on the US for its defence. Some analysts claim it has long been in Tokyo's interests to play up the China "threat". But objectively speaking, the threat is real, and it becomes tangibly more worrying by the day.

But aware of the perception that US regional influence is receding, and that the smallest spark could cause a conflagration, Obama has shifted his approach. His so-called "pivot" to Asia, giving the area a higher foreign policy priority, is principally aimed (despite denials) at countering Chinese blue-water navy ambitions in the Pacific and other unsettling manifestations of Chinese power projection.

Regional observers question how serious Obama is about the China "threat" and whether, for example, he would really come to Japan's defence if the Senkaku dispute degenerated into a shooting war. Perhaps 2014 will provide the answer.

The Met Office has warned of flooding in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Environment Secretary Owen Paterson is to chair a meeting of the government's emergencies committee Cobra on Friday to discuss the weather situation. He warned on Thursday that "exceptional weather" would hit the UK on Friday and over the weekend.

Many of the severe flood warnings relate to the coasts of Devon and Cornwall, the River Severn in Gloucestershire and south and west Wales. Waves more than 30ft (10m) high are expected to hit Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly later, and a "major incident" has been declared by local authorities. The Environment Agency and Coastguard have asked people to stay away from coastal areas due to the risk of being swept out to sea.

The New York and New Jersey governors have declared a state of emergency, urging people to stay indoors. Many schools and businesses have closed amid warnings the storm will worsen overnight and into Friday morning.

"We're going to see a lot of snow and a lot of wind," said Jason Tuell, of the US National Weather Service. "We're concerned about whiteout conditions possibly tonight with the blowing and drifting snow." More than 2,200 flights were cancelled on Thursday, and by the early hours of Friday a further 1,000 flights scheduled for later in the day had already been cancelled, according to FlightAware.com.

Weather officials have issued a blizzard warning for the Long Island region of New York, where up to 10in of snow is expected.

Italy's Jewish communities have hit back at the spokesman of the anti-austerity Pitchfork movement, who described Italy as being "enslaved by wealthy Jewish bankers". The Pitchfork protestors' spokesman, Andrea Zunino, who made the anti-Semitic comments, represents thousands of demonstrators who took to the streets in towns and cities across Italy to voice anger at austerity measures.

Renzo Gattegna, representing the Jewish community, said the words were "delirious"."Those words shamelessly recall a historical period characterised by death, violence and denial of the most elementary rights," he told daily La Repubblica.

Conspiracy theories regarding Jews and banking were popular during the rise of National Socialism and the Nazis. Earlier, Zunino had claimed: "We want government resignation. We want sovereignty over Italy which is now the slave of bankers, like the Rothschilds: it is odd that five or six among the world's richest people are Jews."

The comments were published in conservative daily Sankei Shimbun on Wednesday, and said the constitution will have been revised after Tokyo hosts the Olympic Games in 2020. Article 9 of the Japanese constitution forbids the use of war to settle international disputes and calls for peace to be found using justice and order. The article was added to the Japanese constitution following WWII.

“Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes,” states the article. Prime Minister Abe said that the constitution needs to be rethought to deal with the changing times, given that it was laid down over six decades ago.

In addition, Abe spoke of the importance of defending Japanese territory from the growing assertiveness of the Chinese in the region. China raised tensions in the area in November when it created an air defense zone that encroached on the territories of neighboring countries.

Japanese lawmakers reacted angrily and accused the Chinese government of being “reckless and risky” and attempting to alter the “status quo” in the region. China, for its part, has called on Japan to desist from provocative actions and repair diplomatic ties between the Asian nations.

"Never, I don't think, in recent history have you had unemployment this chronically high for so long with the market having done this well," Roben Farzad, an economics writer and contributor to Bloomberg's Businessweek, said on PBS Newshour Tuesday. As Huffington Post reporter Mark Gongloff points out, "Corporate profits are soaring largely because companies have been squeezing costs — especially labor costs."

However, for the half of Americans who avoid or cannot afford to dally in the stock market, these gains are inconsequential. With the unemployment rate currently near 7 percent, it's clear that many of these corporate gains have not had any positive impact on working people. And for the "man on the street," the New Year will bring changes of another measure. On Saturday, emergency federal unemployment benefits were allowed to expire for 1.3 million people who have been unemployed more than six months.

"These are precisely the jobless who will suffer most from a cutoff, since they have been scraping by on unemployment checks for so long that their financial situations are already precarious, if not dire," writes Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson. Compounding these "dire" financial straits, 2013 also saw the gutting of essential social safety nets. In November, food stamp benefits were slashed for an estimated 48 million people, including 22 million children, by an average of 7%.

Across the country, however, state lawmakers were busy getting more than 40,000 bills passed, ones that tackle everything from drones to food stamp benefits.

In Illinois for example, teenagers will no longer get to use tanning beds without a doctor's note. If you live in Delaware, visit the shark fin buffet while you can, a new law will make it illegal to own, sell, or distribute the controversial delicacy. And in California, new laws take effect that will let students take part in school sports, or use bathrooms based on their gender identity, regardless of the gender noted in their birth certificates.

Thousands celebrated as midnight passed and Colorado’s Prohibition on Marijuana officially came to an end. Retail sales weren't to begin until 8 am, but marijuana fans didn't wait to celebrate the industry. In downtown Denver close to 600 supporters of Amendment 64 did so with an ‘End of Prohibition Party’ - one of several that took place across the city - echoing scenes of the 1933 festivities that marked the end of alcohol prohibition in America.

Flapper girls danced, a swing band played and hundreds of balloons tumbled from the ceiling as, at midnight, a banner declaring: ‘Cannabis Prohibition is Over!' unfurled to roars from the crowd. Smoking marijuana in public remains illegal but, according to organizers David Maddenka, Executive Editor of The Hemp Connoisseur magazine and Brett Mouser, Founder and CEO of Mahatma Extreme Concentrates, this was a private party.

Back in 1933 the once forbidden liquor was consumed hungrily and excessively in newly legitimate Speak Easys. It may be harder to raise a toast with a spliff, bong or vaporizer but all were in evidence and the party balloons, and some of the guests, floated in air thick with the scent of weed.

The UK has now reached the Government’s controversial target of spending 0.7 per cent of gross national income on international aid, with the total reaching more than £11.2 billion last year. However, analysis of an annual index of global corruption compiled by the respected organisation Transparency International has shown that the recipients of British overseas support included nearly all the countries who have the most serious problems with bribery and abuse of power, The Daily Mail reported.

In 2012 the UK donated £86.8 million to help people in Somalia, ranked the most corrupt nation in the world. There was also £200 million in British aid for Afghanistan, rated third in Transparency International’s list. In many cases the money is channelled via charities and agencies rather than being given directly to the countries’ governments in an attempt to avoid it being pocketed by corrupt officials.

Peter Bone, the Conservative MP for Wellingborough, told The Daily Mail: “I am sure ministers take what precautions they can, but the situation in many of these countries is so bad that there is no way of knowing where the money ends up. It all comes down to this ridiculous artificial target which means we have to send more and more money every time the economy improves, rather than having a real assessment of need.”

Things are wildly different today. A huge chunk of modern-day technology, from hybrid cars to iPhones to flat-screen TVs to radiation screens, use dozens of different metals and alloys. A computer chip typically involves more than 60 different elements that are specifically selected to optimize performance, like europium or dysprosium.

And that's long raised a concern: What would happen if we run short of any of these valuable metals? Say there's a war. Or unrest in a crucial mining region. Or China decides to lock up its strontium deposits. Could we easily come up with substitutes? Or is modern society vulnerable to a materials shortage?

Here's the case for vulnerability: A fascinating recent paper in The Proceedings of the National Academies of Science looks at 62 different metals that are widely used in modern-day industry. For a dozen metals, potential substitutes are either inadequate or flat-out unavailable. And there are no "excellent" substitutes for any of the 62 metals. A shortage of any of them could do some damage.

As cattle trailers that had traveled up to four hours in 95-degree heat began to unload, 15 heifers and steers hobbled down the ramps on August 5, barely able to walk. The reason: The animals had lost their hooves, according to US Department of Agriculture documents reviewed by Reuters. The documents show the 15 animals were destroyed. The next day, the hottest day of the month, two more animals with missing hooves arrived by truck. Again, the animals were destroyed, the documents show.

Merck, in a statement to Reuters, stressed the safety of its product. It said the company investigates all reports of adverse reactions to its drugs, and did so after the deaths near Pasco. Merck declined to identify the names of the third-party investigators or provide more detail on the research findings.

Reports that Zilmax causes lameness in some animals have raised concerns about the tradeoffs associated with a drug that adds up to 33 pounds of marketable meat to a 1,300-pound steer and has helped some feedlots stay in business at a time of punishing industry consolidation.

Some previously staunch supporters of Merck's innovative growth drug are beginning to question the product's safety record. "Maybe we found the point where we pushed the cattle just so hard in the sake of making a buck that we exceeded the biological limits of the cattle," said Abe Turgeon, a prominent livestock nutritionist, who had previously recommended Zilmax to some customers.

A thousand anecdotes proving his humanity have built his public image – everything from his sneaking out at night to feed the poor to his personally telephoning a father mourning his son's premature death. To capture the public's imagination, good deeds trump any amount of words.

Most people really don't care about theological nuances and political subtleties. They care about kindness. My 20-year-old stepson, who hasn't set foot in a church (willingly) in years, quotes Francis at me on an almost daily basis. He's getting his information from Twitter and Pulse, and is the one to tell me that Francis had said an atheist could be a good person, and who told me the Pope had made sandwiches for his Swiss guard when he was hungry.

Sadly, acts of kindness are so rare among public figures, that Francis strikes us as extraordinary. We have come to expect high-profile to mean high-maintenance. To learn that someone in a supreme position can do so much good is positively subversive. Far more so than if the Pope were a socialist.

Breton, 29, worked as a nurse at Horizons Healthcare Services in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, when she was told that all employees were required to get a flu shot. The Center of Disease Control and Prevention advises that all health care professionals get vaccinated annually. She told her employers that she would not get the vaccine after she explained that there were very limited studies of the effects on pregnant women.

The mother of one submitted letters from her obstetrician and primary care doctor supporting her decision, but she was told that she would be fired on December 17 if she did not receive the vaccine before then. Horizons Healthcare Services spokesman Alan Peterson told CNN affiliate WPVI that it's unconscionable for a health care worker not to be immunized and that pregnant women are more susceptible to the flu.

Breton came to the decision with her family after three miscarriages.

"A reversal of the sun's magnetic field is, literally, a big event," said Nasa’s Dr Tony Phillips. "The domain of the sun's magnetic influence (also known as the 'heliosphere') extends billions of kilometers beyond Pluto. Changes to the field's polarity ripple all the way out to the Voyager probes, on the doorstep of interstellar space."

"At the height of each magnetic flip, the sun goes through periods of more solar activity, during which there are more sunspots, and more eruptive events such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections," said Nasa’s Karen C Fox. "Cosmic rays are also affected," added Dr Phillips. "These are high-energy particles accelerated to nearly light speed by supernova explosions and other violent events in the galaxy."

"What is going wrong with the world is vastly outweighed by what is going right. And the run of depressing news stories can actually blind us to the greatest story of our age: we really are on our way to making poverty history."

Fraser's conservatism is the kind that uplifts. Bruce Anderson's, by contrast, is a real downer. Writing for the Telegraph, he warns that we are on the brink of nuclear catastrophe. With the end of the Cold War there is suddenly nothing to hold radical Islam back; madmen define the course of events. Palestine and Pakistan are ready to blow.

Last year was a year of near-misses. The West nearly went to war in Syria, which would have put us on the side of an alliance that includes the kind of Islamists we've been fighting in Afghanistan. North Korea declared hypothetical war on the United States, or at least to obliterate its capitalist lackeys that run South Korea. All of this was presumably for domestic consumption: Kim Jong-un was still working on building his brand in Pyongyang. China on that occasion did the right thing and urged caution. But over the Senkakus islands it went a little postal itself, threatening to spark World War III for the sake of some fishing huts.

Here's the rub: the peace and democracy that the West has enjoyed since 1945 is not the End of History but an exceptional moment that proves the rule that, for most people throughout most of history, life has been nasty, brutish and short. And our party in Europe may well end soon, too. The self-destructors of the Middle East may wage war on us. China might decide to call in its debts. Russia might try to prove its might with a confrontation.

And the end needn't come from without if the ongoing economic crisis erodes the material comfort that has kept us living in a consumer dream for so long. According to opinion polls, the Front National is likely to sweep the French elections in 2014 thanks to joblessness and immigration. We could be on the verge of witnessing a second Hitler.