The ruling by the Washington District court comes amid heightened debate over the legality of the collection of billions of telephone records — so-called phone “metadata” — that was exposed in documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the rogue security contractor.

Judge Richard Leon, a conservative judge appointed by George W Bush, said that the NSA’s collection of the data was “almost Orwellian” in its scope and probably violated the fourth ammendment of the US Constiution.

“I cannot imagine a more 'indiscriminate’ and 'arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying it and analysing it without judicial approval,” Judge Leon wrote in a 68-page judgment.

“The almost-Orwellian technology that enables the Government to store and analyse the phone metadata of every telephone user in the United States” he said “is unlike anything that could have been conceived in 1979,” when the Supreme Court case of Smith vs Maryland first allowed the government to collect such data.

With the aid of such luminaries as Peter Hain, the message they wanted to put across was that Mrs Thatcher was a friend of apartheid and opposed to Mandela’s release from prison. As all the evidence shows, this was, of course, the very reverse of the truth.

As set out in detail in A Journey With Margaret Thatcher, by Sir Robin Renwick, whom she sent to South Africa as our ambassador in 1987 – and as was confirmed last week, under the heading “Why Mandela owed a huge debt to Thatcher”, by FW de Klerk, the prime minister who shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Mandela for their joint work in ending white rule – Mrs Thatcher played a crucial part in a process to which she long saw Mandela’s release as the key.

She first put this to South Africa’s hard-line prime minister PW Botha as early as 1984. She three times stood up to the clamour of Commonwealth leaders for more sanctions precisely because she knew these would harm black Africans more than anyone.

She explicitly appointed Renwick to work for Mandela’s release with Botha’s successor, de Klerk. And no one was more generous in recognising her part in the story than Mandela himself, which was why she was the first Western leader he came to see, and thank, after leaving prison in 1990. All this Channel 4 News blotted out. The reason for this was that it had its preferred “narrative”, which it wanted to put over regardless of the facts.

Germany lays claim to a number of Christmas traditions, including the tree, the nutcracker, glass baubles, the Advent calendar and the Christmas market. But Felicitas Höptner, director of the German Christmas Museum in the Bavarian city of Rothenburg, thinks Father Christmas's German origins are "under threat".

She said Germans no longer understood the origins of Father Christmas or the differences between him and the ever-laughing Santa Claus who was spawned by a German immigrant to the United States in the 19th century. Her museum has applied for Father Christmas and Saint Nicholas, the fourth century Greek bishop he is derived from, to be put on UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

From the bottles of beer you drink, to the places you visit on vacation, the social networking site will compile everything there is to know about you (and the billion other people online) - and then make sense of it with the hope of selling better, targeted advertising in your news feed.

The social networking giant has teamed up with New York University to set up a research lab designed to learn about artificial intelligence. The California-based social network giant is hiring professor Yann LeCun of NYU's Center for Data Science to head up a new artificial intelligence lab, aiming to use cutting-edge science to make Facebook more interesting and relevant.

It would enable Facebook to learn more about individuals and ultimately achieve better results for targeted ads and news feed improvements.

The exact composition of the international mandate is up for discussion, the sources said, but Kerry’s plan recommended a coalition that includes the Vatican, together with a group of Muslim countries such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

The international arrangement is being proposed as a temporary solution for about two to three years while security arrangements in Jerusalem between Israelis and Palestinians are finalized, said the sources.

Israel, the sources said, was not receptive to the particulars of Kerry’s plan, especially the concept of Turkish participation in Jerusalem. Kerry told the Israelis he would hold talks with the Kingdom of Jordan about its playing a leading role in the proposal in the place of Turkey, the sources added.

Kerry was in Jerusalem on Friday as part of an Obama administration effort to reach a deal for a Palestinian state by April, a timeline that is still on track, Kerry told reporters. “We are working on an approach that both guarantees Israel’s security and fully respects Palestinian sovereignty,” Kerry added.

The case has become a flashpoint in the ideological tug-of-war going on in the Catholic Church over Francis’ revolutionary agenda, which has thrilled progressives and alarmed some conservatives.

The Vatican in July named the Reverend Fidenzio Volpi, a Franciscan Capuchin friar, as a special commissioner to run the order with a mandate to quell the dissent that had erupted over the liturgy, improve unity within its ranks and get a handle on its finances. In the same decree appointing Volpi, Francis forbade the friars from celebrating the old Latin Mass unless they got special permission, a clear rollback from Benedict’s 2007 decision.

In the weeks that followed, traditionalists voiced outrage: four tradition-minded Italian intellectuals wrote to the Vatican accusing it of violating Benedict’s 2007 edict by restricting the Latin Mass for the friars, saying the Holy See was imposing “unjust discrimination” against those who celebrate the ancient rite.

Volpi though was undeterred: He sent their founder, the Reverend Stefano Maria Manelli, to live in a religious home while he set about turning the order around. And on December 8, he took action, issuing a series of sanctions in the name of the pope that have stunned observers for their seeming severity: He closed the friars’ seminary and sent its students to other religious universities in Rome.

He suspended the activities of the friars’ lay movement. He suspended ordinations of new priests for a year and required future priests to formally accept the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and its new liturgy or be kicked out. And he decreed that current priests must commit themselves in writing to following the existing mission of the order.

Last month, Rush Limbaugh said that Francis’ views on poverty equated to “pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope.” “Marxist ideology is wrong,” the pope said in an apparent response to Limbaugh. “But in my life I have known many Marxists who are good people, so I don’t feel offended.”

Going on to address Limbaugh’s accusation that his papacy has become “purely political,” the pope said he is only following “the social doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church” by speaking out about economic inequality, and that “this does not mean being Marxist.” By pointing out rampant global poverty and the excess wealth concentrated among global elites, he is merely presenting a “snapshot of what is happening” in the world today, he added.

But the typhoon wasn’t the only incidence of extreme weather this year. From the tornado that tore apart the Oklahoma town of Moore in May to the floods that drowned parts of Colorado in September, 2013 saw more than its share of storms, heat waves and other natural disasters.

2013 may not be as bad as 2012, which was the hottest year in US history and featured 11 weather events that causes losses exceeding $1 billion, including superstorm Sandy. But the price of extreme weather is still high.

There was, however, one major caveat. In order for the law to be enacted, at least four other Northeastern states, together totaling a population of over 20 million people, must enact similar GMO laws. This clause, according to the Danbury Daily Voice, was included to help local farmers "by ensuring regional adoption of the new labeling system before requiring local farms to analyze and label genetically engineered products."

Those states could include Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania or New Jersey. However, on the other side of New England, Maine has already passed its own GMO labeling law, but this law also includes the same regional clause — meaning two New England states now require the labeling of GMOs, but only if the other nearby states join along.

However, while the rubik's cube of New England GMO labeling laws may seem difficult to line up, Malloy still remained confident that the move is a step in the right direction. "This is a beginning, and I want to be clear what it is a beginning of," Malloy said at the public signing outside an organic restaurant in the city of Fairfield. "It is a national movement that will requiring (food) labeling."

But the world of politics is never that simple. There was as much calculating pragmatism as there was morality in Mandela’s public stance after he was released from prison. In the heady idealism and ‘We Shall Overcome’ pop-idol politics of the 60s, the 1964 trial that convicted Mandela of sabotage and conspiracy was turned on its head into a world-wide triumph in the fight against apartheid.

To the Western liberal, Mandela was no revolutionary communist prepared to use violence to create a totalitarian Soviet state in South Africa. He was a martyr in the fight against the West’s new-found original sin of racism. From the moment of his conviction Mandela was all Sweetness and Light while South African whites were demonised throughout the West as Cromwellian puritans who refused to enter the twentieth century. That the beleaguered South African whites might have had a case was not entertained.

This Sweetness and Light image of Mandela suited not just Western liberals but the anti-Western Soviet Union and China, at the time funding violent revolution throughout Africa and themselves, of course, paragons of freedom.

Facts can be awkward. The British historian Stephen Ellis has shown that Mandela had secretly been a member of the South African Communist Party’s Central Committee at the time of his trial in 1964. Membership of the South African Communist Party was vehemently denied, but there can be little doubt that Mandela and the other defendants in the trial were serious about the use of violence and turning South Africa into a pro-Soviet totalitarian Marxist state.

As the South African journalist Rian Malan points out, almost all of Mandela’s co-conspirators were committed to ‘a Sovietist doctrine that envisaged a two-phase ending to the South African struggle - a “democratic national revolution”, followed by a second revolution in which the Marxist-Leninist vanguard took power.’ Faced with this deadly threat, the determination of the South African government to resist Mandela and the ANC [African National Congress] was perfectly reasonable. Only Western liberals, singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ at a safe distance from the battlefield could believe otherwise.

It looks as though the onboard desalinization systems that take salt out of seawater to make it drinkable, were taking-in radioactive water from the ocean for the crew to drink, cook with and bath in, before anyone realized there was a massive radiation spill into the ocean.

Charles Bonner, attorney representing sailors from the USS Ronald Reagan said “the crew members were not only going to the rescue by jumping into the water and rescuing people out of the water, but they were drinking desalinated sea water, bathing in it, until finally the captain of the USS Ronald Reagan alarmed people that they were encountering high levels of radiation.”

Bonner says that as a result of this exposure, the 51 sailors have come down with a host of medical problems, “They have testicular cancer, they have thyroid cancers, they have leukemias, they have rectal and gynecological bleeding, a host of problems that they did not have before … people are going blind, pilots who had perfect eyesight but now have tumors on the brain. And it’s only been 3 years since they went in.”

Bonner pointed out that these service men and women are young people, ages 21, 22, 23 years old and no one in their family had ever suffered any of these kinds of illnesses before.

“I think the ecumenical issue and the ecumenical challenge is very close to his heart,” Swiss Cardinal Kurt Koch told CNA on December 13. From December 14-19, Cardinal Koch will travel to Russia to meet with leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church. He will meet with Patriarch Kirill of Moscow as well Metropolitan Hilarion, who is president of the Department of External Church Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church.

“The possibility or the opportunity of a meeting between Pope Francis and his Holiness Kirill” would require “a very good and profound, deep preparation,” the cardinal explained. “I hope this trip can be a little path in the way of preparation.”

Compared to the size of our economy, Britain is now one of the most heavily indebted countries in the Western world. That’s official. Our total debts stand at more than FIVE TIMES what our entire economy is worth. Proportionally, that’s more debt than Italy… Portugal… Spain… and almost twice as much debt as Greece. Those are four countries already in the throes of financial crisis.

We’re the odd one out because we haven’t collapsed – yet. But things can’t stay that way for long. And the worst part is, even THAT isn’t the full story… Because when you add in all of Britain’s “unfunded obligations” – promises the Government has made on things like public sector pensions – our debts swell to 900% of our economy. That’s right – when you add everything up, we owe TEN TIMES what our entire economy is worth.

Our political leaders still like to see Britain as a world power. But let’s not delude ourselves. It’s clear to see: we’re totally broke. In 1982 Margaret Thatcher’s government had to pay 15% to borrow money for three years. Now, the government only has to pay 2% to borrow money over the same period. That’s seven times cheaper than in 1982. But these ‘good times’ are about to come to an abrupt end.

The simple truth is, if interest rates were at their normal rate of 5% - instead of the extremely low 2% they’re at right now – there’s absolutely no way Britain could ever repay its debts. In fact, at normal rates of interest we’re already bust. Not just ‘in over our heads’ but six feet under.

The SPD said that 76 percent of its grassroots members who took part in a postal ballot voted in a referendum in favour of joining a right-left coalition with the conservatives.

Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), won the September 22 election but fell short of a majority. They need a partner and spent much of the last three months negotiating a coalition agreement with the SPD, a distant second in September.

The leaders of the three parties will announce the 15 members of the cabinet on December 15. The coalition agreement is due to be signed on Monday and Merkel's new government could be sworn into office on December 17.

The older plants the UK has been forced to close would have produced cheaper power for longer if EU rules had not forced them out of business. That is bad enough. But surely the EU should let the UK get on with finding replacements, before the lights go out?

The EU may have a good case that the level of implied subsidy in the agreed nuclear power price is high. But what do they expect to happen, if they rule out generating power from the cheaper fuels? How can we generate CO2 free power, without massive subsidies and ramped up prices? How does the treatment of nuclear differ from windfarms, which they allow despite providing very expensive electricity with huge producer subsidies?

We used to show people the absurdities of the common agricultural and fisheries policy to show them just how expensive and unhelpful EU policies could be. Dear food in our time, and dumping fish back in the sea as they were the wrong type of fish to catch, were the hallmarks of EU policy for years. Now they control so much more.

Our energy policy is no longer our UK policy, but an imported EU one. It is driving industry out of the UK as power is so dear, and it now threatens us with insufficient power to get us through the next few winters. Give us a break EU.